


Everything Money Can Buy

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Background Rumbelle, Eventual Swan Queen, Festive fic, Gen, Homelessness, Swan Believer, background Dwarf Star
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:12:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21633808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: The Greatest Store in the WorldAU. When misfortune strikes and leaves Emma Swan and her son homeless just before Christmas, the ever-resourceful Emma has a ready solution. They’ll move into Mills Department Store, a place they can only dream of affording to buy from. It’s not easy, having to deal with a perpetually grumpy doorman, a nasty assistant manager, and an extremely suspect Santa, but Emma and Henry soon learn that the kindness of strangers is something money can’t buy.
Relationships: Henry Mills & Emma Swan
Comments: 67
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

As soon as Henry walked out of school on the last day of term before the Christmas holidays, he knew that something was wrong. His mum was waiting for him by the school gates, which was normal. She was wearing an extremely overly bright smile, which was not. She was also surrounded by bags, which, whilst not a regular occurrence, was frequent enough for Henry to know exactly what it meant.

“Ok, what happened to the van?”

He picked up the battered old suitcase that held all of their sentimental values and began to walk away from the gates, out of a desire to avoid the embarrassment of being seen with all his worldly goods around his feet rather than anything else. If something had happened to the beloved VW camper that they’d called home for as long as he could remember, then he certainly didn’t know where he was striding off to with such purpose, leaving Mum behind to pick up all the other bags and rush along after him.

“Nothing has happened to the van, it’s perfectly safe.” Mum caught up with him and guided him in the direction of the town centre. Henry just raised his eyebrows at this blithe statement.

“Where is it then, and why aren’t all the bags in it?”

“It’s been clamped and towed and it’s currently in a DVLA impound, but at least I was not lying when I said that it was safe.” Mum readjusted the backpack straps, effortlessly juggling the two holdalls as if she’d been doing it all her life. She’d certainly been doing it for all of Henry’s life.

“Yes, it’s safe, but what about us? We can’t sleep in it if it’s in an impound.” Henry sincerely hoped that Mum had a plan. It wasn’t the first time that they’d lost the van, but the last time it had happened, they’d ended up in the homeless shelter overnight and Mum had vowed that as long as they were both alive and could both walk then they would never stay there again. Mum usually had a plan. She was good like that.

“We’ll be all right. We just have to think of it as an adventure. Life’s one big adventure, right? You can see this as one of your operations.”

“What, operation ‘let’s choose between sleeping under a bridge or braving the nuns at the homeless shelter again’?”

“We are not that desperate.” For the first time since he’d come out of the gates, Henry saw Mum’s upbeat demeanour drop. “Come on, let’s go to the housing office and see what they can do for us. They must have something available short notice for a child without a van.”

Henry hauled up the suitcase where it had begun to drag along the ground and followed Mum through the town. No matter where they went, Mum always knew where the emergency housing office was. Henry was beginning to think that it was the first place she scouted out whenever they arrived in a new town. After all, the threat of losing the van was always upon them, especially if the only place they could find to park it was a place where it really shouldn’t be parked, and as depressing as it was, it always paid to have a back-up plan. Just as long as the back-up plan wasn’t the nuns.

Henry saw Mum’s shoulders droop as they reached the housing office, and as he caught up with her, he could see why.

“Oh.” He dropped the suitcase with the same air of defeat as Mum dropped the holdalls. “That’s bad.”

The housing office doors were padlocked shut with a battered, handwritten sign in the reinforced glass window telling the world at large that the office was closed due to short staffing and would reopen at nine o’clock next morning.

“Ok, well, that was a bust.” Mum was trying to sound cheerful, but it was obvious that this had taken the wind out of her sails somewhat. “On to plan B. Let’s find somewhere warm that we can hang out for a couple of hours whilst I think up a plan C.”

“Mum…”

“Henry, I promise you that no one will be sleeping under a bridge tonight.”

They didn’t come into the centre very often; everything here was far too expensive for their tight budget, and there was never anywhere to park the van. They’d always stuck to the outer districts before, whenever they were in the vicinity of the town. They moved around so often, going wherever Mum could find work, that all of the towns blended into each other in the end. Henry had been to so many schools that he had forgotten most of them already.

He remembered this one, though, and he remembered this town. This town was the home of the most wonderful shop in the entire world; the Mills department store. The place could almost rival Harrods for the amount of stuff at ridiculous prices that it sold. Despite knowing that they could barely afford to step inside, let alone actually buy anything, Mills was Henry and Mum’s favourite place. Sometimes, if the stars aligned and it was Mum’s payday and she had some left over, they’d buy some chocolate from the food hall and sit on the bench outside opposite the front doors to eat it.

Sitting opposite the front doors gave them an excellent view of all the comings and goings, and they had spent many a happy hour making commentary on all the people who frequented the store, pulling up in taxis and chauffeured limousines, all waited upon by the formidable Mr Gold.

It was impossible to think of Mills without Mr Gold. He’d been there forever. Well, for as long as Henry had been aware of the store, which in hindsight was probably only about three years. Still, he was an institution. In his grey greatcoat and top hat, absolutely dripping with silver braid, he was the doorman to outdo all doormen. That he was the only doorman that Henry had ever seen, and Mills was the only shop he’d ever been to that still employed a doorman was neither here nor there. Mr Gold was as much a part of Mills as the terrific Christmas window displays.

He was also incredibly Scottish and incredibly terrifying, but that was beside the point.

Henry wasn’t surprised when they ended up outside Mills, staring at the Christmas windows. They’d been around the entire shop twice and taken very thorough stock of every window when Henry, his arms aching from carrying the suitcase, peeled off to go and sit on the bench and rest his legs. Mum pulled him back.

“It’s too cold to sit outside, Henry.” The first few flakes of snow were beginning to tumble out of the sky, although it still wasn’t the right conditions for them to settle yet. “I mean look, if Gold’s cold then it has to be bad.”

True enough, Gold was blowing on his gloved hands and stamping his feet in the intervals between him opening the doors and whistling up cabs for people.

“Come on. Let’s go inside.”

Henry looked down at the suitcase, and at Mum’s bulging backpack and holdalls. They definitely didn’t look like the kind of people who would be shopping at Mills. Mr Gold probably wouldn’t even let them in.

“We’ve got as much right to go in and look around as anyone else,” Mum said defiantly. She slung one of the holdalls over her elbow and took Henry’s free hand in hers. “We can browse with the best of them.”

All the same, they waited until Gold wasn’t looking in their direction before rushing inside as quickly and unobtrusively as they could with all their baggage, garnering a few odd looks from other customers and the woman on the customer service desk just inside.

The first hurdle negotiated, Henry felt rather more positive about the experience, and soon they were riding the escalators up and down all five floors and staring in wonder at the vast array of toys that were on offer. Henry didn’t mind that he wouldn’t be getting any of them for Christmas. There were enough things out on display that he could still have a go. Mum was sitting on a kiddie chair in the corner, resting her feet on the suitcase and ignoring the snide looks from all the other parents and in her turn looking at them condescendingly when their own children started throwing tantrums about not being allowed new toys so close to Christmas.

_“Ladies and gentleman, Mills department store will be closing in five minutes’ time.”_

Henry looked over at Mum, but she didn’t seem to be showing any signs of moving from her perch.

“Mum? We have to go, the shop’s closing.”

“Hmm.” Mum stood up slowly, gathering all the bags up. “I think we’ve got time yet.”

“Mum, the shop’s closing in five minutes. We’ll be locked in.”

Mum looked at him with a wide grin on her face. “And who’s to say that would be such a bad thing, eh?”

“The security guards will kick us out.”

“Not if we’re very clever. Come on.” She held out the suitcase to him and shouldered the other bags. “Second floor. I’ve got a plan.”

Henry couldn’t really complain too much. He’d been hoping that Mum would come up with a plan, after all, and there really wasn’t a better shop to get stuck in overnight than Mills.

They made their way down to the second floor; all but deserted now as people finished paying for their purchases and making their way down to the exit. There didn’t seem to be any staff about, but they still snuck furtively through the racks of towels and cushions until they reached their destination.

Beds and bed linen.

Mum gave a final look around before dropping all the bags and shoving them under the nearest display bed, letting the valance drop down as if nothing was out of the ordinary, just as the floorwalker came round, ushering the final few shoppers out of the department. Mum guided Henry towards the escalators, and even though he knew she had a plan, he couldn’t help looking back over his shoulder every couple of seconds at the bed that all of their possessions were currently hidden under. He couldn’t help fearing that they wouldn’t be there by the time they got back to them.

Instead of going down the escalators, Mum hurried Henry off around a corner and slipped her picks out of her pocket. Although she normally tried to stay on the right side of the law after her first brushes with the police, back before Henry had been born, there were some occasions when needs must, and in this case, needs must that they hid in a cleaning cupboard until the store was locked up and all the staff had left. There wasn’t a lot of room in the cupboard; it definitely wouldn’t have fitted all the bags inside it as well as them, and two hoovers, and several buckets and mops.

They stayed in the cupboard so long that Henry thought he was about to pass out from the smell of citrus toilet cleaner before Mum, who had been listening with her ear against the door for the last however long it was, finally deemed it safe to come out.

The store was dark, most of the lights switched off and the escalators now static and silent. Although they were more than likely alone in the place, they still crept along on tiptoe back towards beds and bed linen to find that the bags were thankfully where they left them.

Mum smiled. “We’re all set,” she said. “I told you that I had a plan.”

Henry would have been more impressed with the plan had his stomach not been rumbling for all the time that they had been squashed in the cupboard. “Does that plan involve dinner?”

“Of course! Is this, or is this not, Mills department store, home of the famous Mills tearoom?”

“Mum, we can’t just eat food from the tearoom! That’s stealing!”

“Not if we eat the stuff that goes out of date today.” Mum left the bags under the bed and made her way towards the escalators. “They’ll only throw it out tomorrow. We’re doing them a favour by eating it, really.”

Henry couldn’t fault the logic; if the shop wouldn’t sell it anyway then it couldn’t hurt if they ate it.

Climbing up two sets of stopped escalators was hard work, especially because they were so incredibly noisy. When they were turned on and making noise themselves, it wasn’t so noticeable, but now it seemed like every step was echoing throughout the entire shop, and they had to stop every few steps to make sure that they were the only ones making such a racket and no one else was moving about. Henry kept expecting a security guard to sic a dog on them at any moment and send them bowling down the escalators to land in a sorry heap in the foyer under the customer service desk.

They finally made it to the tearoom without incident, and Mum led the way into the kitchen, pawing through the fridges for food that was going out of date. She turned up sandwiches and scones and a large cream éclair; all in all, it was a very good haul, and Henry couldn’t wait to get stuck into it. They’d never been able to afford afternoon tea in the Mills tearoom before. They’d barely scrape by for a biscuit. Of course, sitting in the kitchen wasn’t exactly the same as high tea in the tearoom itself being waited on by staff in waistcoats and long aprons, but it was still the highlight of Henry’s day. Possibly the highlight of the month. Maybe even the entire year.

“Ok. Now, I think we ought to round off this evening with hot cocoa. Or, rather, luxury hot chocolate mix that goes out of date this evening and really, it would be a crime to waste it.” Mum pulled two packets out of her pocket and went back to the fridge in search of milk about to turn. Thankfully that was far easier to find, and Mum set about making cocoa in the microwave.

Unfortunately, Mum was used to the rickety little seven-hundred-watt microwave in the van that needed to be wedged shut with a chopping board when in use, and the microwave in the tearoom kitchen was an industrial one designed for making large quantities at high temperatures in a very short space of time.

Henry dived under the table as the microwave gave off a loud bang and sparked at the wall plug.

“Huh. So much for no one knowing that we were here. At least it’s not smoking, or we’d set the sprinklers off.” Mum grabbed a pair of rubber gloves from the sink and touched the appliance gingerly, pulling the plug out of the wall before rescuing their cocoa from inside it. It took a while to clean up, but the chocolate was still just as good by the end of it.

“At least they’ve got another one.” Mum looked at second microwave, innocuous beside its broken partner. “Maybe they’ll blame it on gremlins. I mean, it’s hardly likely that people are going to have using the microwave illicitly after the shop closed, is it? It’s not going to be the first conclusion that they come to.”

Henry just laughed. Maybe it was being full of nice food and great cocoa, but he wasn’t feeling as worried about the broken microwave as he might have been before. In fact, he was feeling quite happy about the plan to stay in the shop by the time they’d finished their cocoa and washed up after themselves, and he was determined to make the most of their night there.

Tomorrow they’d get the van back, and everything would go back to normal, but for this one night, they could pretend that they lived in luxury, and that everything in the store was theirs.


	2. Chapter 2

When Emma woke up the next morning, she almost couldn’t remember where she was. It had been a long time since she’d slept in a bed this luxurious – if she ever had. She reached under her pillow to silence the alarm on her phone. As tempting as it was to go for five more minutes, especially under a genuine goose feather duvet and soft wool blankets, the entire reason that they were in such sumptuous surroundings in the first place meant that they were going to have to make a move sharpish, before it became obvious that they had been in there all night.

She sat up and leaned down to the other end of the bed to wake Henry, who groaned and pulled the covers up over this head.

“What time is it?” he mumbled.

“It’s nearly six. Come on, Henry, we have to move.”

“But it’s a Saturday!”

“I know, but the cleaners will be coming in soon and we need to be ready to sneak out with them before the shop opens. Believe me, I’ve cleaned enough shops before opening hours in my time to know how this works.”

Truth be told, Henry had cleaned enough shops to know how it worked too. Well, usually he’d been sitting in a corner on a step stool out of the way whilst she’d done the cleaning, but he’d certainly been around. It was hard enough holding down a job when she had no qualifications and no fixed abode; trying to hold one down with a small child was almost impossible, and Henry had ended up coming to work with her more often than not.

They got up and set the bed back to as pristine a showroom condition as they could manage, and soon enough, the sound of hoovers and the chatter of cleaning staff could be heard on the floors below them. Emma rushed back to the cleaning cupboard that they’d hidden in the previous evening; it had been during that fraught period at closing time that she’d come up with the plan to disguise their exit this morning. She grabbed a roll of bin bags and a pair of rubber gloves, and with Henry’s help, she tossed all of their baggage into a black sack and started dragging it towards the stairs. It was slow going, but at least they weren’t quite as conspicuous as they could have been.

They were almost in the clear when the cleaning team got up to beds and bed linen, and their progress was hindered even further by the appearance of the assistant manager. Emma cursed and shoved the bin bag full of their belongings in a corner, instructing Henry to guard it and not look anyone in the eye. She was going to have to keep up the cleaning façade for a little longer in order to make it look legit. Thank God she had enough experience to know what she was doing.

In all the time that Emma had been perusing the shelves of Mills without any intention of buying anything, the assistant manager, a Miss Zelena West, had been the bane of Emma’s window-shopping happiness. Like Gold the doorman, she was an institution at the department store, but unlike Gold, there was absolutely nothing likeable about her. Gold was scary, but he did at least smile on occasion and his broad Glasgow accent betrayed roots far from the bright lights and luxury of Mills; so, for that reason, Emma trusted him even if she could feel his eyes boring into her sometimes when they were sitting on their bench across the street, watching him.

Zelena, on the other hand, was always annoying and never smiled so much as leered, her eyes never quite matching what her mouth was doing. There were always too many teeth in her smile, and Emma always got the distinct impression that there was more to her than met the eye. If there was one person whom she absolutely did not want to meet whilst attempting to leave the store having been trespassing in it all night, then it was Zelena. She would definitely be the type to haul them both straight off to the owner’s office and get as many charges as possible pressed against them.

What was she doing here so early anyway? Surely no one could be so paranoid about their place of work that they decided to supervise the cleaning staff, but apparently so. She was stalking in and out of all the display racks, hunting for dust in nooks and crannies and finger marks on any and all mirrored surfaces. Emma showed willing with a duster for a bit, and one of the other ladies caught her eye. She could barely have been out of her teens, if that, and she was so pregnant she could barely fit down between the aisles. Emma felt a pang of sympathy; that had been her ten years ago, still working up until her due date because she had no other choice.

The girl grimaced, rubbing her back.

“When’s it due?” Emma asked, coming over to pick up her dropped feather duster and save unnecessary bending down.

“New Year’s Day. Thanks.” The girl took the duster back with a grateful smile. “I haven’t seen you around here before. Are you new?”

“Yeah, first day on the job.” She nodded over to Zelena, still on the prowl. “Is she always like that?”

“Yep. Nothing’s ever good enough for the wicked witch.”

Emma had to laugh at the nickname; considering Zelena was almost always dressed in some shade of green, it certainly suited her.

“I’m Ashley, by the way. Just let me know if you need any help finding your way round. It’s a huge place; I got lost in kitchenware on my first day. I thought I was going to be stuck in an endless loop of saucepans and lasagne dishes for the rest of my life.”

“I’m Emma. Thanks for the offer.”

“Hey!” Zelena had noticed them talking, and Emma quickly turned so that the other woman wouldn’t see her face. “Less gossiping and more dusting! These beds won’t clean themselves!”

“It might help if she picked up a duster once in her life,” Ashley muttered. Emma gave a snort and made her excuses to leave Ashley alone, slipping away when Zelena’s back was turned again and making her way back to Henry.

“You were gone ages!” he hissed. “I was getting worried!”

Emma grabbed the bin bag and started banging it down the stairs. “I got trapped by the wicked witch. I’ll explain later,” she added quickly on seeing Henry’s confused expression. “Did anyone see you?”

“No. No one came past except the customer services lady and she didn’t say anything. Maybe bringing your kid to work isn’t so rare after all.”

Emma thought of Ashley, and she wondered what would happen after New Year’s Day.

Down on the ground floor, Emma hit a slight flaw in her plan. She’d spent enough time in Mills over the years to know its layout pretty well, but that was only the parts that the public got to see. They were now in the backstage area, so to speak. Staff only. And she had no idea where to find the exit.

People were coming and going, the cleaners and the regular staff coming in to set up their departments; but no one paid her and Henry any mind. They were cleaners after all, lugging a huge bag of rubbish out to the bins. They came in this way, so they must know their way out again.

Emma pushed Henry down behind the bag and dropped into a crouch beside him as she heard a very familiar and very angry voice.

“If Zelena’s held my coat to ransom in the dry-cleaning cupboard again, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”

Gold came down the corridor past them, and Emma had to double take at his appearance. She’d only ever seen him resplendent in his uniform, and to see him now, wearing an obviously hand-knitted jumper with a penguin wearing earmuffs on it, was a jarring reminder that he did have a life outside of the store.

“It’s ok, I rescued it for you.”

Gold stopped at the end of the corridor before he could crash into the lady from the customer services desk. She was new this year; Emma had not seen her working on the desk before. She held up Gold’s uniform coat in its plastic dry-cleaning bag, and Emma couldn’t help but notice the slight little red blush that rose in her cheeks when Gold grabbed it with a smile.

“Belle, you are a lifesaver. What would I do without you?”

“Oh, you’d manage, I’m sure.”

“Mum!”

Henry was gesturing frantically down the corridor to where the other cleaners were taking rubbish bags, and Emma knew that it was time to move on and not watch the sweet little scene taking place between Gold and Belle any longer. She hauled up their bin bag and followed Henry down the corridor and out into the yard, whereupon they ducked behind a bin and grabbed all their luggage.

They were out of the woods, and their night of camping out in the store was over.

“Come on, Henry. Let’s go and get our van back.”

X

Someone wise once said that it never rains but it pours. If they had been a bit wiser still, they would have said that it never rains but it pours and thunders and hails and snows all at the same time, and less than a week before Christmas to boot.

Emma was sitting in the cramped office of the DVLA impound trying very hard not to swear, since Henry was sitting only a foot away, pretending to be absorbed in a newspaper and not paying any attention to what the adults were doing, but in reality, he was taking absolutely everything in and he knew that things were going from bad to worse to even worse with every passing moment.

She also knew that she really couldn’t take it out on the poor clerk who was dealing with her case. When the van had been towed in the first place and she’d made it clear that she wouldn’t be able to pay the fine; he’d offered to try and get her a payment plan of sorts. As it was, Emma had pawned some of her mother’s jewellery to make up the cash; the sentimental value was nothing compared to actually having somewhere to call home that wasn’t a department store’s bed section.

She had come to the impound ready to pay, only for the incredibly apologetic and nervous-looking clerk to tell her that he couldn’t release the van to her because it had failed so many safety inspections that it had been deemed dangerous to drive. He was going through the list of all its failings with her now, and every time he faltered, Emma could tell that there was more bad news to come but that he’d already given her so much that he didn’t have the heart to continue.

Eventually, they came to the end of the list, and he looked up at her with an expression that could only be described as a cringe.

“I’m really sorry,” he said. “But I just can’t let you drive away in it.”

Emma sat back in her chair and sighed, staring up at the ceiling. There was no way that she would be able to afford all the repairs that the agency had said would be needed before the van would be road legal again. She had barely scraped together enough for the fine in the first place. This was just the icing on the cake of a really terrible year. Every year, she was determined that things were going to get better and that they might finally stop living out of a van.

She’d got her wish all right. They were definitely not living out of a van anymore. They weren’t living out of anywhere.

“To be honest, it might be more economical to write it off,” the clerk said. “I’m not sure how much you’d get for its scrap value, but it would be better than nothing.”

Emma nodded. “Yeah. You’re probably right. How do I go about doing that, then?”

“Well, we won’t be able to do anything until after Christmas, I’m afraid. Everywhere is shut down for the holidays.”

Emma threw her hands up in the air and let them drop down to her sides. “Fantastic. Fan-bloody-tastic.”

There was nothing more that she could do here. All she could hope was that the emergency housing office had somewhere available for them.

“Come on, Henry.” She sighed and hefted up their bags again. “Let’s go.”

“We’re not getting the van back, are we?”

“No.”

They walked on through the town in silence. The van was pretty much the only home that Henry had ever known, and now it had been taken from him in a finger snap, and just before Christmas as well. Henry was used to not receiving Christmas presents, but at least he’d never yet had something taken away from him at Christmas. This was the opposite of the Christmas spirit, and his desolation was palpable.

“We’ll find somewhere else,” Emma said, trying to keep his spirits up, but it was clear that Henry didn’t believe her, and she didn’t quite believe herself. “I’m sure that there are other vans out there.” That said, maybe it would be better to put some roots down somewhere and start living between four walls instead of on four wheels. Maybe this would be the year that they stopped living in the van in a good way after all.

The housing office was open this time, but as they walked in, took the slip of paper from the machine with their number on it, and sat down to wait, Emma didn’t hold out much hope. There were at least six other families in front of them, and all of them were more than just a single mum and her son. On the one hand, being just the two of them, they needed less room and would hopefully be easier to place somewhere, but on the other, bigger families with much younger children had much more urgent need of shelter. Emma remembered with a shiver her first couple of homeless years after Henry had been born, a constant fear of losing him to the bitter cold, burying him under so many blankets as she curled up around him in the back of her car that he could barely be seen. As desperate as she and Henry were, she would never wish that on anyone. Besides, she and Henry had a back-up plan if necessary. Living out of Mills wasn’t exactly ideal, but they’d made it work last night. Surely they could make it work again. All they had to do was stay out of Zelena’s way.

The morning wore on, and Emma’s hopes were getting stretched extremely thin by the time her number was called. She had seen the apologetic shakes of the head that all of the other applicants had been getting, and she knew that things weren’t exactly looking great. It came as absolutely no surprise when she was told that there would be no accommodation available until the new year. If she could just find somewhere to stay over the holidays, then everything would be all right, but all resources were stretched at this time of year, et cetera, et cetera. The woman was telling her in all but the most blatant terms that her best bet would be to go to the nuns at the homeless shelter over the Christmas period and to come back in January.

Emma shook her head. No, she would never go back to the shelter, not after she’d nearly come to blows with the Mother Superior after finding the head nun going through all her and Henry’s belongings, looking for items of monetary value as a ‘voluntary donation’ towards their stay at the shelter. No one had believed her when she’d tried to report it to the authorities. Considering that they were nuns who did regular work in the community and Emma had several shoplifting cautions and convictions under her belt, she wasn’t surprised, but the injustice of it all still stung.

“What are we going to do, Mum?” Henry asked. He had been so good about the whole thing, never once complaining or whining about a very boring day spent in various offices, or the fact that for once in her life, Emma didn’t have a cunning plan to get them out of their latest scrape. Her son was old beyond his years, and Emma felt a huge wave of guilt wash over her that his early life had been so hard. She had done the best for him that she could with what little she had, and she loved him more than life itself, but sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she had taken the advice of everyone around her and given him up for adoption when he was born. Maybe he would have had a better life; he might have been adopted and been living in a comfortable house with central heating and proper beds.

Or he might have had a childhood like hers after her parents were killed and she’d been shoved unceremoniously into the foster system; never to be loved and only to be kicked out to fend for herself as soon as she aged out.

She continued in silence, trying to think of an answer to Henry’s question that wouldn’t leave them both in despair, trudging along the street with aching arms from carrying all the bags all day, until the familiar bright lights of Mills came into view. It was tempting fate to spend another night there, but this time Emma had a much better plan.

“We’ll go camping.”


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing to do, of course, was to navigate Gold. They loitered on the corner for a while trying to catch a time when he wasn’t watching to sneak inside, but since he was a doorman and his entire purpose was to open the doors, that was going to be easier said than done. In the end, Emma decided that taking refuge in audacity was going to be their best course of action, and she marched smartly up to the doors, Henry in tow.

Gold looked at them, one eyebrow quirked.

“You’re a little heavily laden for a shopping trip, don’t you think?”

Emma shrugged, trying to keep her manner as blasé as possible. “We might be buying a lot of things. Save the environment, bring your own bags, you know the kind of thing.”

Gold didn’t believe a word she was saying, that was quite clear, but then some other customers, ones who looked far more like they were going into the store for legitimate reasons, came along, and he was distracted by opening the doors for them. Emma noticed that he was limping a little as he walked, and she wondered if he’d always done or if this was a recent injury.

She shook the thought away from her head; they needed to get inside, and they needed Gold to let them in, and he currently wasn’t doing because he thought that, laden down with very large bags as they were, the two of them were potential shoplifters. Emma could quite see where he was coming from, but she couldn’t exactly explain their circumstances to him in an effort to get him on side. Stealing from the shop was one thing. Living in it was quite another, even if they weren’t taking anything that wouldn’t be thrown out anyway.

“So, what are you looking for today?” Gold asked, the polite tone at odds with his suspicious eyes.

“Christmas presents, of course,” Henry said. “What’s everyone else looking for at this time of year?”

Gold didn’t have a ready response to that one, and Emma smiled to herself. Maybe if she and Henry tag-teamed then they’d be able to wear him down.

The door opened from the inside and Gold went to grab it as the woman from the customer service desk rushed out, skittering a little in her sky-high heels on the wet steps. The frost overnight had been thick and heavy, and although the steps had been thoroughly salted, the melted ice was still slippery. Gold threw out his arms to catch her before she could trip, and she blushed.

“Thank you, Mr Gold.”

“You’re welcome, Miss French. You shouldn’t be running about in those things; they’re lethal.”

“I know, I know, but I’ll be lost in the crowd otherwise. I’d get trampled underfoot. And I’ve told you, you can call me Belle.”

“Very well, Belle. As long as you call me Alistair.”

Belle smiled. “Alistair.”

It was at that moment that they both seemed to realise that Gold still had his arms around her from where he’d broken her fall and they sprang apart as if they’d been stung, brushing themselves down and attempting to look professional once more. Belle’s face was beet red by this point, and she looked around, saw that Emma and Henry were watching the proceedings with interest, and turned back to Gold with a cough.

“I, erm, I just came out to give you these, actually.” She held up what looked like a couple of teabags. “You just scrunch them up like this and they get warm, you see. I thought you could put them in your gloves. It’s so cold today. I know it won’t do much for your ankle, but at least your hands won’t freeze.”

“Oh.” It was Gold’s turn to go pink around the ears now. “Thank you, Miss French. I mean, Belle.”

He slipped the handwarmers into his gloves and flexed his hands a couple of times. “Yes, that’s much better.”

Belle darted in and pressed a peck of a kiss against his cheek, the movement so sudden that one could have been forgiven for thinking that it hadn’t happened at all.

“Merry Christmas, Alistair.”

She turned to go back inside, and Gold went to get the door for her, at which point she saw that Emma and Henry were still standing around outside the shop.

“I do beg your pardon,” she said. “Distracting the doorman and blocking the doorway. After you, please.”

There was nothing that Gold could do to stop them this time, having been practically invited in, and Emma gave Belle a wide smile and Gold a triumphant nod.

“Thank you very much.”

They hurried inside and slipped up the sweeping staircase in the foyer before Belle could speak to them again. Emma peered through the balustrade, watching as the other woman went back to stand behind the customer services desk again. There was such a sweet little smile on her face; the few moments she’d spent outside with Gold had obviously been the highlight in a day of dealing with irate and overprivileged customers. Emma had lived long enough in a cruel world to know that love was a strange and fickle thing, but she wasn’t so jaded that she couldn’t see the beginnings of a grand romance when they were playing out right in front of her; for Gold definitely returned those feelings.

“Mum?” Henry tugged at her sleeve. “Where are we going now?”

She left Belle to her own devices and stood up again, dragging their bags to the top of the stairs.

“Like I said. We’re going camping. Actually, first of all we’re going to stationery. Find me some pens and tester post-its, Henry, I’ve had a brilliant idea.”

Henry duly raced on ahead to get the requested items, and Emma hoped that continuing to be audacious would work for them in the long run. Since this was going to be their permanent home over the Christmas period, they should probably settle in as much as they could.

Henry ran back through the shoppers with a Sharpie and a tester pad, and Emma tore off a few sheets, writing in neat block capitals “DISPLAY ONLY, THIS ITEM IS NOT FOR SALE” on all of them before sending Henry to return the pad and pen to their rightful places.

“And now,” she said when Henry came back, “we camp.”

They took the bags down to the basement, where the camping, outdoors and luggage department was housed, finding the department blessedly quieter than the rest of the store. No one in their right mind bought a tent and other sundry camping equipment in the middle of December. They almost had the entire department to themselves, aside from some people looking at high-end luggage in the corner, talking to the sales assistant about their plans to spend Christmas skiing in the Pyrenees. It was all right for some.

Now at a slight degree more leisure, Emma poked around the display tents until she found one that looked like a good bet, in the far corner of the store and covered in camouflage netting. The display stand next to it said that it was the perfect hide for bird and animal watching, but Emma didn’t care about such things. What she cared about was the fact that it was out of the way and that hopefully, the shop assistants wouldn’t think to come this far back into the tent section with any regularity. She bent down and shoved the bags inside the opening, ushering Henry in after them.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“Are we going to stay here?”

“Seems like as good a place as any. I mean look – we’ve even got ready-made beds.” The tent had been set up with airbeds and sleeping bags, and although the little gas stove obviously wouldn’t work, the heavy-duty battery powered lanterns would, meaning that they didn’t need to worry about when the store lights went out at the end of the day.

Henry nodded his agreement. “Yeah, I think it’s good. So, what are the post-it notes for?”

“Well, as Gold said, we are rather heavily laden for a shopping trip. So, in order to look a little more inconspicuous, we’re going to have to dump the bags. Where better to hide a walking stick than among other walking sticks? Hide the luggage in the camping section. It won’t look too out of place.”

That was a blatant lie; their holdalls were several years old, worn and patched in so many places that hardly any of the original fabric remained, and the suitcase covered in stickers from their travels all over the country. Against the sleek new luggage in the department, theirs stuck out like a sore thumb, but it was better than nothing. She piled the bags in one corner of the tent that they had earmarked as theirs and stuck the notes all over it. Whilst they didn’t exactly look official, Emma knew from experience that polite people, like most of the ones who shopped at Mills, would generally always respect signs, even if they looked somewhat amateurish.

And no one would want to buy their luggage anyway.

“Right.” She sat back on her heels and surveyed her handiwork. “Shall we go and browse, Henry, like all serious shoppers?”

Henry just looked at her in admiration. “You know Mum, I think you have the best plans.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“I still don’t think that we’re going to get away with living in the store though,” he added as they made their way back up the escalators towards the main foyer. Emma glanced around to check that the coast was clear; Belle was tied up with a rather angry-looking customer at the desk and wouldn’t notice them go past. Emma began to rethink her previous assertion that most of the people that shopped at Mills were polite. It seemed that gaining money seemed to bring with it an equal loss of manners.

Her theory was proved spectacularly right just a moment later when, still absorbed by people watching in the foyer, she managed to collide with someone who was coming down the stairs at a run.

“Hey, watch where you’re going!”

The woman, sharp-suited and exuding efficiency from every pore, reminded Emma a little of Zelena, and immediately her hackles were raised.

“Since I was standing pretty much still and you were the one running down the stairs, maybe you’re the one who should watch where they’re going.”

The woman seemed taken aback for a moment, as if she wasn’t used to people questioning her, and Emma felt a little smile quirk up at the corner of her mouth. On the one hand, getting into a fight with another customer was definitely a way to firstly be noticed and secondly be kicked out of the store with no way of getting back to their stowed luggage, but on the other hand, Emma had not had a very good day and she was looking for someone, or something, to take it out on.

The other woman’s mouth pulled up in a sneer.

“Well, maybe if you weren’t so caught up in gawping like a fish, you wouldn’t be blocking the staircase. Someone should have a word with Gold about keeping the riff-raff out.” Her eyes tracked Emma from top to toe and back again, and Emma found herself doing the same. She wondered if the woman worked here and would need to be kept an eye out for like Zelena; she wasn’t wearing a coat, so it seemed likely that she wasn’t a shopper, but she also wasn’t wearing a name tag.

“Yeah,” she said eventually, meeting the woman’s eyes, unable to back down from the challenge. “Maybe they should.”

They stayed in silence for a moment, just staring each other down, but there was something in the air that wasn’t just the charged tension of an argument. This woman wasn’t used to being questioned, but she had respect for her challenger, and Emma in turn had respect for that. For the briefest of moments, the sneer turned into a genuine little smile, but then the condescending manner was back.

“Enjoy your shopping trip. If you can afford anything more than pressing your nose up against the display cases. Please don’t do that, though. The cleaners work so hard to get the smudges out every morning.”

Emma raised an eyebrow as the woman stalked on past, and turned to Henry, who was watching her with an expression that was far too shrewd for any ten-year-old to be wearing.

“Rude, huh?”

“Yeah.” Henry wasn’t buying it. “I couldn’t tell if you wanted to punch her or kiss her.”

“Henry!”

“I’m just saying. It was like something out of a film. You know, when the couple who’ve been fighting the entire time stop arguing and just kiss at the end.”

“I need to stop taking you to the cinema.” Emma shook her head in disbelief. “Or at least, find a way to make sure we only see kid-friendly films.” She’d learned to sneak into the cinema without paying from an ex-boyfriend, but it came with the disadvantage of never knowing what you were going to be seeing until you got there. The number of times that they’d crawled into a hiding space only for Emma to turn them straight back around when the film turned out to be completely unsuitable for a ten-year-old was ridiculous. Who showed that kind of film at ten in the morning, for crying out loud?

Henry continued to have a knowing smirk on his face all the way up to the tearoom. Emma wasn’t quite sure why she’d taken them in the direction of the tearoom since they certainly couldn’t afford to have tea there until after everyone else had gone home. Perhaps it was out of a desire to keep moving, and the tearoom being on the top floor of the building, it was naturally the place that they stopped in since there was no further to go. Although, the place didn’t look like its normal haven of genteel tranquillity. There was a rather longer queue than normal, and the waitresses were looking much more harassed than usual.

With a twist of guilt in her stomach, Emma remembered the broken microwave from the previous night, and she and Henry looked at each other, grimacing. They inched their way around the edge of the tearoom, getting as close to the kitchen area as they could. One of the waitresses was holding the broken plug with an utterly forlorn look on her face as a maintenance man in dark blue overalls unscrewed the socket from the wall.

“I swear it wasn’t me this time, Leroy,” the waitress was saying. “I know I’m always the one to break these things, and I know I don’t know how I do it – the coffee machine exploding was as inexplicable to me as it was to everyone else – but this one really wasn’t me. It was broken when I got here this morning, I swear.”

“It’s ok, Astrid.” The maintenance man finished with the socket and took the plug from the waitress’s hands, beginning to fit a new fuse into it. “I believe you.”

“You’re the only one,” she lamented. “Sometimes I think trouble just follows me around.”

“That’s ok,” the maintenance man – Leroy, evidently – said. “If trouble follows you around, I’ll just follow the trouble around.”

“Oh Leroy… You can’t keep cleaning up after me.”

Leroy shrugged. “It’s no bother. It means I get to spend time with you.”

The waitress gave a shy little giggle, and Emma smiled. As horrible as she felt that someone else had got the blame for breaking the microwave, at least it seemed to have brought two people together, and Leroy the maintenance man and Astrid the clumsy waitress who made coffee machines explode seemed to be getting on with their tentative romance a lot more easily than Belle and Gold were getting on with theirs.

Well, it was the season for it after all. Mistletoe and goodwill everywhere. And hey, it was free entertainment. Emma shrugged. It was amazing what you saw when you looked closely.

Now, why did her mind keep coming back to the woman they’d bumped into on the stairs?


	4. Chapter 4

Henry wasn’t really sure what to make of Mum’s plan to camp in Mills until the holidays were over. On the face of it, it seemed like a brilliant idea. There was more than enough space for them, after all, and even if they had to keep dodging Zelena and Gold and various security guards, it wasn’t like there was nowhere to hide. Mum had already proved very good at blending in and getting by with sheer audacity.

Henry couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to go wrong, though. Living out of a department store that they couldn’t afford to buy from seemed fraught with danger. What if they broke something that, unlike the microwave, was actually for sale? What if they ran out of sell-by scones to eat? He didn’t want to confide his fears to Mum, because he knew that they really didn’t have any alternative, and he wanted to go back to the homeless shelter as little as she did.

They had ended up back in the toy section as they waited for the shop to close, and as good a time as Henry had been having with the display models, there was only so much he could do with them whilst the department was still full of other kids and parents frantically searching for the one gift that their child was clamouring for in time for Christmas. The adults were behaving even more badly than the children were, and nowhere was this more embodied than in Santa Claus himself.

Mills had a new Santa this year. For all the previous years that Henry had visited the store during the Christmas period, whilst Santa’s grotto was in residence, their Santa had always been played by the same man, one who had a genuine beard and merry twinkling eyes.

This year’s Santa was a much younger man with a fake beard that kept falling off his chin to show scrappy black stubble underneath. He was also accompanied by a new elf. The previous Santa’s elf had been a jolly little old lady whom Henry was fairly sure was actually Mrs Santa. The new elf was a small, fat man, trailing after Santa as he made his way around the toy department advertising the grotto. They passed Henry and the elf thrust several flyers into his hands. Henry discreetly got rid of them by shoving them under a display of action figures.

There was something very off about this Santa, and it wasn’t the way that he was swaying slightly and smelled rather strongly of rum. In fact, his sack was making a distinct sloshing noise as he swung it around haphazardly, and the elf kept having to duck to avoid being brained with contraband liquor. No, Henry didn’t trust him an inch, and his mistrust was rewarded when Santa came across Mum, who was back sitting in one of the tiny chairs in the corner playing with a Rubik’s cube. It was good to know that Mum was still a kid at heart as well.

“Hey, gorgeous. Fancy a ride on my sleigh?”

He waggled his eyebrows and Mum just gave him a disgusted look.

“I think you might be the worst department store Santa I’ve ever met,” she said conversationally.

“Yeah, well, it’s only a seasonal job,” Santa muttered. “I get much better gigs in the summer.”

“Don’t let the children hear you say that. You’ll be ruining the magic of Christmas for them, and I don’t think that the management would take too kindly to that. I’d be careful if I were you. You don’t want to lose this gig in the winter, however much better your summer ones might be.”

Santa just glowered at her, and moved away, his ho ho hos having lost what little merriness they’d had to start with.

Henry went over to Mum, sitting down on the chair beside her and wondering what to say. He couldn’t really tell her that he was bored, it would be ungrateful. He was in the greatest toy department in the country, probably, surrounded by every toy his heart could possibly desire, but the problem was that he didn’t actually own any of them and at the end of the day, they would all have to go back on their shelves. He wanted his own things, even if they were shabby and worn from years of love. He wanted his own space, his own home. The store was great, but it was nothing like a home. If only they could just go down to their tent and hole up against the world with all their own stuff.

Mum successfully completed the Rubik’s cube and looked over at him.

“You ok?”

“Yep.”

Mum raised an eyebrow and Henry sighed. She was always able to tell when he was lying. Well, she could generally always tell when anyone was lying, which was a useful superpower to have in most situations, but not when she was using it against him.

“Yeah, you’re right, it’s downright depressing here,” she said. “Let’s go downstairs to books. I reckon that as long as we don’t dog-ear them and we put them back on the shelves when we’re done, they wouldn’t notice us taking a couple for personal use for a while.”

Henry could get behind that idea whole-heartedly, and they made their way down to the books section. Just like toys, it was stupidly busy, but at least there were a lot fewer screaming babies and toddlers throwing tantrums in this department. There were even armchairs. Henry made a beeline for the children’s section and was soon wrapped up in the world of fairy tales. Maybe there were some upsides to living in the store after all.

X

Behind the customer service desk, Belle eased one foot out of her stiletto heel and wriggled her toes before replacing it and doing the same on the other side. Whilst she was used to wearing sky-scraping heels on a regular basis, standing up in them for ten hours a day was not something that she would wish on anyone. Christmas was always the worst time for anyone working in retail, be it the cashiers in the food hall or her at the customer service desk. Everyone was always in a bad mood, everyone was always ready to throw down and fight over the slightest perceived annoyance, and no one spared a thought for the poor staff for whom it was also Christmastime, and most of whom didn’t have the cash to splash on anything from the store that they worked at.

Still, however much her feet were hurting her, Belle knew that Alistair had it worse, standing outside in the cold all day, in all weathers. The man must have an immune system made of iron, the elements that he was exposed to. If she’d been in that position she was sure that she’d never be in work due to catching colds and chills and flu all the time. Since everyone’s first impression of Mills was the doorman, it really wouldn’t do for him to be standing there sneezing every five minutes.

She hoped that the handwarmers would help him. She found them to be a godsend herself when she was walking home after work. Belle sighed. She probably shouldn’t be thinking about Alistair quite so much. People would start to talk. In fact, people were already talking. Her friend Leroy from maintenance had been complaining that she should just ask Gold out already before they both died from mutual pining, to which Belle had promptly responded that if she was going to make a move on her crush then Leroy also had to ask out Astrid in the tearoom.

Leroy had somewhat grudgingly stopped mentioning it after that, but Belle did have to admit that he had a point. She was hardly going to get anywhere if she kept dancing around her feelings like this. She’d hoped that giving him the handwarmers earlier would have shown him how she felt, and maybe elicited some kind of reciprocation from him. Leroy maintained that the feelings Belle had were requited, but Belle wasn’t so sure. Alistair had always been closed off and reticent with everyone, and Belle considered it an honour that his usual cool demeanour thawed out a little with her. She knew that he considered her to be a friend, but she couldn’t help wondering if it meant that he considered her slightly more than a friend.

Presently, the man himself came into the shop, rubbing his arms through his coat.

“It’s brass monkeys out there,” he grumbled, stamping his feet to try and get the circulation flowing again and grimacing when the motion jarred his bad ankle. Belle’s heart went out to him; if she’d had a chair she would have offered it to him, but apparently senior management did not approve of chairs. “Thanks for the handwarmers, though.” He took off his gloves and pulled out the sachets. “I’d be losing fingers to frostbite if it wasn’t for them.”

Belle took one; it was still warm and her own hands weren’t exactly scorching after spending all day in the foyer with people constantly coming in and out; letting the central heating out and bringing the cold air in. She was looking forward to a long hot bath when she got home. Maybe by the time she went to bed she’d have thawed out enough to get some sleep.

She looked over at Alistair, and found that he was also looking at her, and they both looked away, embarrassed at being caught. Belle straightened up. This was the perfect moment to ask him, really. There weren’t any customers coming in or out; there was no-one queuing up to complain at her. All she had to do was ask him out. Ask him if he’d like to go for a drink after work.

“Alistair, I…”

“Ah, Mr Gold. Miss French. As much as I hate to break up the party, I do believe that the doorman is supposed to be on the outside of the building?”

Alistair rolled his eyes, grabbing his gloves and the handwarmers off Belle’s desk. Belle just glowered at Zelena. Trust her to come and break up their moment. She had a knack for that. No matter if she had been nowhere near them five minutes before, she had the uncanny ability to know when Belle and Alistair were ‘fraternising on the clock’ so to speak, and she would appear in the nick of time to prevent Belle from ever managing to get the words out.

“You know, Miss West, I’d like to see you stand outside for ten hours and see how you get on with it,” Alistair said.

“Well, unlike you, Mr Gold, that’s not what I’m being paid to do.” She made little shooing motions towards the door and Alistair moved away, back towards the bleak December streets. He made a rude gesture at Zelena’s back as he left, and Belle couldn’t help but giggle.

“There’s really nothing funny about it, Miss French,” Zelena said. “You shouldn’t be distracting your colleagues. It sets an extremely bad example, and as I’m sure you’re aware, it’s almost Christmas. What does Christmas mean, Miss French?”

“Christmas means customers,” Belle intoned. It was the mantra that Zelena drilled into them every day at the staff briefing. Christmas means customers, and the customers are always right. Customers pay your wages, so they must be treated as if they’re God’s gift to humanity.

Sometimes, Belle thought that senior management might well be worse than the customers themselves. She often got the impression that Zelena would stake out the shop looking for potentially unhappy customers and then persuade them to complain, just so that she could get her money’s worth out of Belle.

Every Christmas, Belle swore that it would be the last one that she worked in retail for. Every Christmas found her living a lie. At least at Mills the money was much better than in the previous places she’d worked, but really, all customers were the same when you got down to it. For all the Mills clientele were the crème de la crème, their manners were just as shocking as everyone else’s when they were complaining. In fact, more so, most of the time, since they worked on the principle that money gave them a license to behave however they pleased.

Belle sighed, trying not to feel bitter, but it was hard. Too many festive seasons spent listening to people far richer than her scream at her that she had personally ruined their Christmas had made her lose the faith in humanity that she’d tried to hold onto for so long. Maybe that was why she sought solace with Leroy and Alistair so much. They had to deal with the ungrateful public just as much as she did, and to the public, they were invisible, the door holders and the microwave menders, of no note to the customers, who were naturally the most important people in the universe, and boy, did they know it.

Speaking of important customers, though… Belle caught sight of the mother and son (at least, she assumed they were a mother and son) that she had met earlier when she’d taken the handwarmers out to Alistair. They were coming down the stairs into the foyer, and she could have sworn she’d already seen them going up and down a few times today already.

Well, it wasn’t unusual for people to make a day of a shopping trip in Mills and go from top to bottom of the store and back again to make sure they hadn’t missed any of it, but they seemed to be suspiciously free of bags. In fact, they’d lost the bags they came in with somewhere.

Belle wondered, because the more she thought about it, the more she remembered seeing them come in the previous day as well, still laden down with all their baggage.

Unlike some more naturally suspicious souls would be, Belle wasn’t worried about them being shoplifters. In her experience, the people who stole from Mills were either professionals who stole to order for customers who could no longer afford the luxuries to which they had become accustomed, or people who could well afford what they were taking but who nevertheless baulked at the price and felt that since their haggling didn’t work, they’d just take it anyway. If you were desperate enough to have to steal to survive, then there was no way that you’d steal from Mills. The goods would be too hard to shift and would be completely useless. If you were living hand to mouth then you needed basic essentials; Belle knew that from experience after her father had lost his livelihood and she’d been breadwinning for the both of them. Mills provided a lot of things, but basic essentials wasn’t really one of them.

The pair coming down the stairs looked around furtively then ducked down towards the basement, and it made Belle wonder. Living in a department store was better than living on the streets, after all, especially so close to Christmas. Although she had no intention of telling another soul about her suspicions, she vowed to keep an eye out for them, just in case. She didn’t have all that much to spare, but she could help them out in her own way.


	5. Chapter 5

Henry had to admit that he felt a lot safer sleeping in the tent in the basement than he had done in beds and bedlinen. The zipped-up tent flap added an extra layer of security against, well, the security guards, and sleeping in sleeping bags with the lantern hanging above them reminded him of the van. It was almost a home from home. As much as he didn’t really want to live in Mills for any longer than they had to – the risks seemed to far outweigh the benefits, in his opinion – he could see himself being happy camping indoors for a while.

Or at least, he could have done, until the moment that he woke up on Sunday morning. The main lights in the shop were up, and he could hear people moving around outside the tent.

“Please let it be the cleaners,” he whispered to himself, and he unzipped the tent flap a minute fraction to peep out.

It was not the cleaners. The people just a few feet away from him, looking at sleeping bags, were most definitely customers, and to make matters even worse, they definitely had a sales assistant with them, pointing out the various merits of various different kinds of sleeping bags. As pleased as Henry was to know that the particular model that he himself was currently inside was one of the best they sold and the one that the shop assistant would personally recommend, that did not stop the rising feeling of dread that and Mum had found themselves in what could euphemistically be termed a bit of a pickle.

“Mum!” He scrambled out of his sleeping bag and shook Mum’s shoulder. “Mum! We overslept! The shop’s open!”

“What?” Mum grumbled. “It’s a Sunday, they don’t open till ten, what are you talking about…” She grabbed her phone and looked at the time.

It was ten fifteen.

“Well, bugger.” She looked at the tent flap. “No one’s going to want to look inside this tent, though, are they?”

Henry shrugged. “Maybe not, but we can’t exactly get out whilst they’re out there.” He pointed at the vague shadows of bodies that could be seen through the tent material.

“Good point. Right. We’d better get dressed and think of a plan.”

Henry and Mum had had to make some daring escapes from some daring places before in their time, so gathering together all of their things in either the dead of night or the middle of the day, or from a very small space, was nothing entirely new to them. All the same, Henry was quite certain that this was the most fraught that the experience had ever been. The need to keep very quiet wasn’t exactly helping, although thankfully the background music of looped Christmas pop tunes drowned out most of the noise of them moving luggage around.

Once they were ready to leave, Mum listened at the tent flap for a while. They really couldn’t stay here much longer; Henry’s stomach was growling and the longer they stayed, the greater their chance of discovery would be.

“Is there anyone there?” Henry whispered.

Mum shook her head. “I can’t tell. I think we’re just going to have to make a break for it.”

With a sudden, decisive movement, she unzipped the tent flap, startling the couple who had been looking at sleeping bags and who had appeared to have opted for the sales assistant’s recommendation. Thankfully, the assistant himself had wandered off. She grabbed her backpack and ushered Henry out of the tent. 

“Well, the tent is definitely big enough for us and the backpack,” she said brightly, brushing herself off. “Come on Henry, we’ll come back and buy one later. We’ve got other shopping to do.”

They hurried off towards the escalators, leaving the astonished shoppers behind them.

“Do you think they bought it?” Henry asked.

“I have no idea, but we only have to get outside, I don’t think they’re likely to raise that much of a fuss in the time it takes us to get up one escalator and out of the door.”

There were all kinds of things that were wrong with that statement, and Henry couldn’t help but be nervous about all the luggage that they had left piled in the tent with the post-its on, but before he could point this out to Mum, they tripped at the last hurdle. Literally, almost. They were nearly out of the door, going as quickly as they possibly could without drawing attention to themselves, when Mum almost collided with Gold.

Henry had always thought that Gold looked very impressive and very terrifying in his uniform, and right now, he looked even more terrifying than he had ever done.

“Sorry,” Mum said cheerily. “If we could just…” She made to dodge past him, tugging on Henry’s hand, but Gold stood steadfastly in their way.

“I didn’t see you come in this morning,” he said, his tone accusatory, and Henry gulped, glancing up at Mum and hoping that she could talk their way out of this one like she’d talked them out of so many other scrapes in the past.

“Well, you know, it’s a big shop and there are a lot of shoppers. Only have to turn your back for a moment and someone can slip by you. I mean, what about now, you’re not monitoring everyone coming in and out now, are you?”

“That’s not the point,” Gold snapped. “I don’t recall you leaving last night, either. I generally have a good memory for these things.”

“Good for you. Keep eating the carrots. Or is that seeing in the dark? Anyway, if you don’t mind, our purchases have been completed and we’d like to leave the store.”

Gold looked her up and down. “Where are your bags?”

Emma patted the backpack. “Save the planet, cut down on plastic waste. Honestly, where are your environmental credentials, Mr Gold?”

“It’s ok, Alistair.”

Belle from the customer service desk came over to them, smiling brightly.

“I saw them come in earlier,” she said. “You were helping unfold Mrs Rothschild out of her taxi.”

Gold looked from Belle to Mum to Henry and back again, then gave an unsure nod and stood aside. Mum gave him her sweetest, butter wouldn’t melt smile, and they left the store just as Zelena’s high heels clattered down the main steps and her less than dulcet tones could be heard admonishing Gold.

“Mr Gold! I believe we had a conversation yesterday about the doorman’s primary location being on the outside of the building!”

Mum and Henry sped around the side of the shop before Gold could come out and find them loitering on the doorstep. It was only once they were out of sight that Henry felt able to breathe freely again.

“She knows, Mum,” he said mournfully. “Belle must know that we’re sleeping in the shop. Because she definitely didn’t see us come in this morning.”

“Yeah.” Mum leaned back against the wall to get her breath back. “Yeah, she must realise that something’s up. Damn it! Oh Henry, I’m so sorry. I was so certain that we’d found somewhere safe.”

“It’s ok.” Henry knew that Mum was trying her best. “We can find somewhere else.”

Although maybe, now that he thought about it, they wouldn’t have to. Belle had covered for them. She hadn’t seen them go in, and she had lied anyway and got them out of their scrape with Gold. And Belle liked Gold, Henry knew that much just from watching their interaction the previous day. She wouldn’t be doing it to get one over on him.

Maybe, just maybe, she was helping them out of the goodness of her heart, and she was actually helping them.

Henry put this tentative hope to Mum as they walked along in search of breakfast. She said nothing for a long time; Mum was used to not trusting anyone to have her best interests at heart. It had been so long since they’d benefitted from the kindness of strangers that she had begun to believe that it did not exist, although Henry still had faith in it.

He had faith in Belle not to give away their secret.

X

Gold was not having a good day. In fact, a day when Gold did have a good day was a rarity lately. His ex-wife had announced that she would be having their son for Christmas this year despite having had him last year and promising that he could stay with his dad this year, and Gold didn’t have the money or energy to try and dispute her. On top of that, he was cold, tired, and in pain, and he was feeling extremely old. His ankle was complaining bitterly about the long days spent outside in the freezing temperatures; it had been so swollen when he’d woken up this morning that he could barely get his support on, but if he’d left it off then he wouldn’t be able to move by the end of the day.

And, of course, there was the woman and the boy, the ones he wasn’t sure about. There was something fishy about them and the vast amounts of baggage that they always had whenever they came into the store. The fact that they’d left without the vast amounts of baggage this morning gave him even more cause for concern than them leaving with the baggage did. If they’d left with it, then he could put them down as petty thieves – not that it was possible for any kind of thievery in a store like Mills to be petty. Leaving the bags was altogether more perplexing. And he really hadn’t seen them come in this morning, and he wasn’t sure that Belle was telling the complete truth either. Still, he trusted Belle. She would have had her reasons for covering for them, he was sure.

Adding the cherry on top of this rather fine cake of complaints, Zelena was acting like a complete nutcase again, seeming to take a great delight in dressing him down in front of myriad customers whenever she found him inside the building in an effort to stop himself from freezing solid outside, and yet being rather overly friendly whenever they were together in private. He tried to avoid her at all costs, but she always seemed to have a way of finding him after staff briefings and trying to corner him. He couldn’t really tell exactly what she wanted, and he had come to believe that her constant reminding him of his place in the proverbial pecking order was some kind of punishment for rejecting her.

Right now, he was prepared to take it as long as it meant that he could stay away from her rapidly widening aura of insanity.

Gold rubbed his hands together, stamping his feet on the freezing paving slabs outside the door, waiting for customers coming in and out. The handwarmers that Belle had given him yesterday were a blessing, and Gold wished that they made a suit out of the material that he could wear under his uniform to keep him toasty in his entirety.

Actually, forget the handwarmers. Belle herself was a blessing. Right now, it felt like she was the only bright spark in his entire miserable life, and he desperately wanted to tell her how much she meant to him, but he could never bring himself to make a move. After all, who in their right mind would want him? He was probably twice her age for a start, not to mention the fact that he’d gone through a very acrimonious divorce, and he was still recovering from the alcoholic funk that he’d settled into after that had happened. It was a miracle that he’d landed the job at Mills, if he was honest, which was why he knew that he couldn’t complain about it, or about Zelena, too much. He owed a lot to Regina Mills, and if that meant putting up with everything he hated about his job, then so be it. At least he had a roof over his head and food on the table, and his son didn’t hate him quite as much as he’d done a few years ago.

Gold’s thoughts meandered back to Belle. Maybe he ought to take a chance and ask her out. It could be something very casual. He could ask her if she was going to the staff party on Christmas Eve. That way he could just arrange to see her there. It was a big enough shop, after all, they could definitely avoid each other if it got awkward. And it wouldn’t seem too much like a date then; just two colleagues looking out for each other during an evening of drunkenness and general debauchery. Ever since Belle had joined Mills, he’d always shared a camaraderie with her that went beyond the normal interactions of two colleagues who didn’t really know each other all that well. They were united against Zelena, both of them looking out for opportunities to undermine her whenever they could and lamenting the fact that those opportunities did not come anywhere near as often as they would like.

Or maybe he could begin the conversation by asking her what she was reading at the moment. She always had a book with her under the customer service desk and was very good at sneaking a quick half a page whilst looking like she was busy on the computer. Gold had found that his own reading repertoire had increased greatly since meeting Belle, as she was always so enthusiastic about her books and he wanted to experience the same kind of joy that she did from them. It didn’t always work; there were several titles that they’d ended up getting into passionate arguments about in the staff breakroom after hours, but Gold didn’t really care. It gave him an excuse to talk to her, after all.

The suspicious-looking mother and son were coming back. They’d left the store so early this morning, practically before they’d had chance to buy anything, and he hadn’t seen them again. His eyes met the blonde woman’s as they came past, and she narrowed hers, hurrying her son along the pavement and not trying to come in. He wondered if they’d try again when his back was turned. For all Mills was a large shop and took up most of the block, it only had the one entrance, so if they wanted to get in, then they would have to go through him. Gold sighed. He should probably just let them in; it would be his act of Christmas charity for the year. At the same time, though, knowing that someone was living in the store and not doing anything about it was a sure way to get himself fired, and getting fired just a couple of days before Christmas was not something anyone wanted. Maybe he could plead ignorance. Hopefully, whoever they were, they were canny enough not to get caught by someone who wasn’t Belle and didn’t have a kind heart.

The door began to open from the inside and Gold moved automatically to take it. When he saw who was coming out, he very nearly let the heavy glass slam back in his face. Killian, this year’s store Santa, a last-minute replacement for Marco, came out of the building and pulled his beard down, taking a long swig from a hipflask.

“You know that Zelena will pull your innards out if she finds you drinking on the job,” he said conversationally.

Killian just glared. “If I’m outside then I’m not on the job,” he muttered. “You try dealing with hundreds of screaming kids and even more screaming parents.”

As much as Killian rubbed him up the wrong way, Gold did have the tiniest bit of sympathy for him. Christmas always brought out the worst in people. It was a shame that Santa didn’t have a naughty list for adults as well.

Killian continued to stand on the steps beside him. Quite the pair they made, really, Gold in his resplendent uniform and Killian in his ill-fitting red and white suit, reeking of rum.

“The bird on customer services,” Killian said presently. Gold bristled; calling any woman a bird wasn’t great, but especially not Belle. “Do you know if she’s single?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Gold reply through gritted teeth. The seething anger was lost on Killian, who just shrugged.

“Huh. Might try my luck at the party. You know no-one ever gets fired for a bit of bad behaviour under the mistletoe at a Christmas party.” He waggled his eyebrows and Gold glared, opening the door with rather more force than necessary.

“Get back in there before Zelena throws a fit, and for God’s sake find a breath mint somewhere.”

Killian just laughed, but dutifully went back inside. Gold was so angry that he let the blonde woman and her son back into the shop without paying them any mind at all.


	6. Chapter 6

**Six**

One thing that had always been a blessing when it came to Henry was that he was an avid reader. They'd spent so much time in libraries over the years as nice and warm safe havens, and he would never tire of books. It was such an easy way to entertain him and to get under a roof for as long as they needed. 

Although the books section in Mills wasn't quite as extensive as the local library, Henry seemed quite happy to stay there for as long as was required. It was quiet there and he'd found himself a little reading nook, away from the watchful eyes of the woman behind the cash desk, who wasn't paying him any attention anyway. Emma decided to take a risk and leave him there for a while so that she could go and surreptitiously check that all their bags and baggage were still safe in the tent.

She was wending her way through the jewellery counters on the ground floor when she found herself trapped between several more earnest shoppers than herself and Santa. She wasn't quite sure why Santa was touting for business in the jewellery section, since it wasn’t exactly likely that there would be all that many children around here, but she wasn't going to knock it. The more customers the merrier. Maybe he got paid on commission by how many parents coughed up the five quid for a visit to Santa's grotto and he needed as much as possible to keep his rum habit going over the holidays. She wondered how he managed to get away with it; surely someone in a place like Mills had some kind of scruples about drinking on the job.

Although, that said, Santa didn’t really look all that much like he was touting for business with any degree of enthusiasm. No, he seemed to be far more interested in the contents of the jewellery counters. Emma raised an eyebrow. All things considered, she thought it highly unlikely that he would be able to afford any of the shiny goodies behind the glass, but stranger things had happened. Her own life was a cavalcade of experiences that no one could ever credit happening in real life.

“Killian!”

The word came not too far from Emma’s ear, a sharp hiss that was probably not intended for her hearing, but that she picked up anyway having spent so many years being on her guard and listening for absolutely anything that might be a threat. She glanced over to see someone trying to shepherd Santa away from the counters as surreptitiously and yet as forcefully as possible. Emma recognised her as the rude woman they’d met on the stairs the other day, and once again she wondered at her position in the store. She was evidently someone very high up because Santa stopped his perusal of diamond necklaces and almost stood to attention when he saw her, meekly accepting the summons and subsequent banishment back upstairs to the children’s department, his elf following along limply behind him.

The dark-haired woman let out a long sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose, and Emma thought that despite her high position, she was feeling the strain of working in retail over the festive period just like everyone else was, although maybe not quite as acutely as those who were dealing with customers on a regular basis.

“I honestly don’t know why Zelena hired him,” she muttered to herself, not realising that Emma could hear every word. Emma gave a little scoff of laughter, and the woman looked up sharply, realising that she had an audience, and moreover that the audience was someone she recognised.

She didn’t recognise Emma immediately. She probably saw that many shoppers coming and going over the course of a day that all the faces blended into one, but Emma saw the moment that the knowledge dawned, and she shifted from foot to foot, wondering what was going to happen now. Luckily, the other woman seemed to be feeling just as awkward as she was about the circumstances.

Naturally, the sensible thing would have been to just walk away and pretend that the brief interaction had never happened, but they had now been looking at each other for too long not to make some kind of acknowledgement of the fact.

Emma decided to break the tension first; to get in quick before the other woman could think up some kind of barb to rival the ones that she had given the previous day.

“What happened to the previous Santa?” she asked. “You’ve had the same guy for years.”

“He’s laid up with a broken leg, unfortunately.” The dark-haired woman sighed. “At least I know that I only have to put up with Killian for another couple of days. I’d get rid of him if I could but Zelena’s in charge of hiring and firing and she seems to like him for some reason. God only knows what the attraction is. Still.” She shrugged. “Maybe she’ll stop trying to chase Gold now. Every time I see her in his vicinity I think he’s going to run for the hills. We can’t lose our Santa and our doorman in the same festive period.”

“Yes, that would be a travesty,” Emma agreed. The other woman caught the deadpan humour in her tone and laughed.

“I know, I know. It can be a bit much sometimes, but Mills has always had a doorman in grey and silver livery, going right back to when it was founded. I can’t imagine this place without one.”

“Well, the place obviously means a lot to you. Anyway, I must get on, nice to meet you, bye!”

Emma rushed away as fast as her feet could take her, only stopping to look over her shoulder once she was safely on the other side of the room. The brunette woman had gone, and Emma wondered again who she was and what she did here, to have such sway over Killian and to know so much of the history.

She also wondered why she couldn’t get her smile out of her mind, and she shook her head angrily in an attempt to drive the thoughts away. This was absolutely not the time to be developing a crush on a woman she’d met twice – and had an argument with on the first occasion to boot. Emma had sworn off all forms of romance in her life as soon as she’d discovered she was expecting Henry, and for the past ten years she’d managed to stick to that without any trouble. It must be the Christmas spirit in the air, she thought. Making her go all silly like something out of a low-budget holiday flick. It was a good job that she was called Emma and not something like Holly, Carol, or Noël. Then she’d have no hope, but on the other hand, she’d be assured of a cheesy Hollywood ending in which everyone lived happily ever after thanks to The Magic of Christmas™. The trouble with films, Emma thought darkly as she stomped towards the escalators to go down to Outdoors and check on their bags, was that they never showed you what happened after the credits rolled; never showed you the realities of life once the joyous throes of a new relationship were over.

She sighed. She’d become so cynical during her twenty-eight years that it was really rather depressing when she stopped to think of it. Perhaps believing in Christmas magic wasn’t such a stupid thing after all. She didn’t want it to set her up with someone, though. She wanted it to get her and Henry a nice safe place to live, and herself a stable job, and some halfway decent Christmas presents for the both of them.

If it set her up with the mysterious dark-haired lady, then that would just be a nice added perk.

X

As much as Henry had enjoyed living in Mills for the last couple of days, the novelty was beginning to wear off slightly. The main problem, he’d decided, was that since the escalators and lifts were switched off after hours, and since the camping section where he and Mum were staying was in the basement, and the tearoom where they were getting most of their food was on the top floor, that meant an awful lot of walking up and down stairs.

“All right,” Mum said once they were finally at the tearoom. “Let’s see what we can find for ourselves today. I’m in the mood for soup.”

“Mum, the last time you tried to heat anything up here, you broke the microwave and a waitress got the blame.”

“Good point, well made. It’s ok, there’s a stove. Hard to break one of those.” Mum started pawing through the shelves, coming up empty-handed with a sigh. “Oh, come on, they can’t have sold everything sell-buy today. That’s just ridiculous. They’d never get over it if they ran out of something, it would be a scandal. Front page news: “Mills tearoom is out of scones, what is the world coming to?””

Henry had to laugh, and he went over to the next fridge to help look for things.

“Erm, Mum?”

On the bottom shelf of the fridge was a large patisserie box with the words ‘sell-buy today’ written on it in big letters.

For a moment, Henry and Mum just looked at it. Henry wasn’t entirely sure that it wasn’t a trap like in old cartoons, and the moment they moved it, alarms would start sounding and a net would spring out of the fridge to catch them.

Mum shivered from the cold of the fridge door being opened and dragged the box out, the desire to eat winning out over the suspicions of intent. Sure enough, when they opened the box on the counter, it was full of the food that they had been unable to find in the over fridge, along with another, slightly smaller pastry box with a note on it.

_This chocolate gateau got dropped so couldn’t be sold. It’s only been inside the cake display unit and not on the floor so it’s safe to eat even though it looks dreadful._

It did indeed look like a small bomb crater rather than a cake, but Henry, unable to stop himself from scooping up a fingerful of rich buttercream, could attest that it definitely tasted much better than it looked.

Mum was just staring at the collection of food.

“I think someone other than Belle knows that we’re here,” she said. “I guess our snacking was more noticeable than we hoped.”

Although Henry had come to the same conclusion, he didn’t really know what to make of it. They weren’t doing anything wrong by eating the food that would not be sold. Lots of places gave their unsold food to homeless shelters at the end of the day; it just so happened that they were homeless and being slightly more proactive in the procuring of the unsold food.

“Do you think it’s going to be a problem?” he said.

Mum shrugged, before grabbing a couple of spoons and handing one to Henry, digging into the chocolate cake herself.

“I mean, they might know that we’re here, but they don’t necessarily know who we are. It’s a bit like the elves and the shoemaker.”

“They leave out food for us and in return we make their shoes?”

“Well, the elves and the shoemaker without the whole ‘shoes’ part.”

They continued to eat the cake in silence for a little while.

“So, what do they want if they don’t want shoes?” Henry asked. In his experience, people generally didn’t do something for nothing, and now they had Belle covering for them in the foyer and a mysterious unknown person providing them with food in the tearoom. Unless Belle was responsible for that as well, but Henry didn’t think she could be. She wouldn’t know about dropped chocolate cakes unless she worked here for a start.

He thought back to Astrid, the waitress who’d been blamed for the microwave disaster and wondered. If anyone suspected that there was someone using the kitchen after hours, then it would be her, but at the same time, they’d given her no reason to help them out, in fact, quite the opposite. For a moment he stared at the chocolate cake in horror, wondering if it could be laced with poison in revenge for the microwave.

“Henry, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Henry told Mum his fears, and when she hid a smile behind her hand, he thought that perhaps they were going to be all right after all.

“Oh Henry, your imagination is wonderful, but it does get carried away sometimes. Don’t you think that poisoning a chocolate cake is just a bit of an overkill as vengeance for being blamed for a broken microwave that’s since been fixed and that we have dutifully steered clear of?”

“Well, you never know.”

“Besides, however wrong it might be for us to be living in the department store, murder is still worse, and someone would have to get the blame when they come in tomorrow morning and find our bodies in the tearoom. That would be an even worse scandal than running out of scones.”

“I don’t know about that; this is Mills after all.”

“Well, it would be a close second.” Mum paused. “Do you think that handyman’s asked her out yet?”

“Who, Astrid?”

“Yeah. You know, I think that you and I can fashion ourselves into little Christmas romance fairies if we’ve a mind to. Leroy the maintenance man and Astrid, Belle and Gold… We’re the perfect festive matchmakers. Love follows us around wherever we go.”

“Are you thinking about that woman we bumped into on the stairs again?”

“No!”

Henry just looked at her. He decided that he had definitely begun to inherit her internal lie detector. She folded.

“Ok, yes. I saw her again today in the jewellery section and we actually had a nice little chat that did not involve any snide remarks or glaring.”

“That’s a positive sign, I think. What’s her name?”

“I have no idea, she still wasn’t wearing a name tag, but she definitely works here.”

“Mum, you’re hopeless. You could at least have asked her name!”

“Oh Henry, I really don’t think that I’m in the right position to be romancing anyone at the moment; it wouldn’t exactly be easy to date. Sorry, must dash, I need to be back inside Mills and hiding in a cupboard before closing time.”

Henry shrugged. “You never know. Stranger things have happened. Especially at Christmas.”

“Don’t you start as well. I’ve already had to convince myself that I’m not the main character of a True Christmas film.”

“So, we’ll just act as the magic elves in everyone else’s True Christmas films instead.”

“Yeah.”

“Ok.” As much as Henry would love for his mother to find someone nice, he was content to facilitate everyone else’s happy endings instead. Maybe it would be best to start on Mum after the holidays, once they weren’t living in the store anymore.

As much as it might be losing its sparkle for him, Henry found himself thinking how much he would miss it.


	7. Chapter 7

Everything had been going swimmingly until Emma had made an impulsive decision.

Emma was no stranger to making impulsive decisions; in fact, most of her life thus far had been just one long series of them. Some of them had turned out well. Some of them had not turned out quite so well.

Going to live in Mills had been an impulsive decision, and that had turned out rather well. They’d gained an ally in Belle from customer services, even if they hadn’t actually exchanged any kind of conversation with her, and it was good to know that they had someone looking out for them against the formidable Gold and the not quite as formidable but still just as terrifying, in different ways, Zelena.

They had a nice warm place to sleep and a steady supply of sell-by food (they’d ventured down into the food hall after getting somewhat bored of scones and stale sandwiches in the tearoom, and had found all manner of interesting things about to go off that they would never normally have eaten), and Emma liked to think that they were paying for their bed and board by helping clean in the mornings so that they could sneak out. (Well, apart from Sunday, obviously, but that was a fluke and she’d made extra sure to set her alarm every day since.)

Her latest impulsive decision had unfortunately not turned out quite so well. She had left Henry in the store whilst she ‘popped out to get something’. Henry had quite rightly pointed out that there wasn’t a lot that could be got elsewhere that couldn’t be got in Mills, but the point remained that the things in Mills were slightly beyond Emma’s means.

She still had the money from her pawned necklace that she had been going to use to get the van back, and she was determined that Henry was going to have a Christmas present this year.

Everything would have been fine if the queue in the post office hadn’t been so long. Honestly, what were all these people doing, waiting to post their Christmas parcels until the last minute and having to mess around with special delivery and recorded-signed-for guarantees? The person working the counter was almost worshipfully grateful that Emma just wanted to buy an armful of stationery and wrapping paper and didn’t need to do anything complicated, but the fact remained that by the time she had run all the way back to Mills the shutters were coming down and the store was closing. With her on the outside and Henry hopefully still on the inside. But more importantly, with her on the outside, separated from her son.

She put on a fresh burst of speed, careening headlong into Gold and nearly sending him flying. He recovered himself and put his arms out to stop Emma toppling over.

“I’m sorry, madam, but the store is closed now.”

“No, no, I have to get back in, I’ve left something inside, it’s very important.”

Gold was looking at her, and looking around her, and looking back down the street after her, and she knew that he was looking for Henry. He knew that Henry was the thing she’d left inside. Oh God, she was a terrible mother and he was going to shop her to social services and…

“I’m sorry, madam.” His tone was firm and brooked no arguments, but at least it wasn’t accusatory. “The store is closed. If you come back tomorrow, Customer Services will help you find whatever it is that you’ve lost. The cleaning staff will hand in any lost property to the desk.”

“No, you don’t understand, I need it tonight! Now!”

Emma ran over to the shutters, pounding on them. “Let me in! Let me back in!”

“Madam, please.” Gold came over, trying to get between her and the shutters without actually manhandling her. It was at that point that the door opened and Emma had hope for all of five seconds before Zelena appeared.

“Madam, I really do appreciate your loyalty to the store but we will be open again first thing tomorrow morning; we officially closed half an hour ago.”

“You don’t understand, I’ve left something inside!”

But Zelena was already gone, and Emma could hear the front doors being locked and bolted. Gold was locking the shutters down as well.

Emma stepped back from the shutters in a daze, leaning back against the window and sliding down it until she was crouching on the floor.

“Madam, you can’t stay in the doorway all night; it won’t make the doors open any quicker.”

Emma looked up sharply, but there was no amusement or sarcasm in Gold’s face. He just looked as tired and beaten down as Emma felt.

“Oh, fuck off,” she grumbled, feeling tears begin to prick the corners of her eyes and wiping them away quickly on her jacket sleeve before he could see. She didn’t cry. She never cried. Unless Henry was involved and was alone in a department store waiting for her to come back when she’d promised she’d only be ten minutes. She should never have left him alone. All she’d wanted to do was make sure he had something to open on Christmas morning that was actually his and that he could keep and do something with.

She had to get back inside; there was simply no other way to go about it. She couldn’t leave Henry alone in there, and she herself had nowhere else to go. There had to be some way in. Jimmying a window wasn’t going to be an option, but perhaps she could sneak in the back way, through the staff exit in the yard. No, there were security guards there. They didn’t take much notice of the people coming out in a morning having done the cleaning, but they would sure as hell notice someone going in.

She pulled herself to her feet and gave the shutters a final slam for good measure.

“No, please don’t do…”

With the shutters being locked, so the security system had been activated and a screeching alarm filled the air.

“…that,” Gold finished. He sighed as the door unlocked and unbolted from the inside again and Zelena looked out.

“Madam, I must ask you to desist. It’s all very well to shop till you drop but there must come a point where the shopping has to stop.” She glared at Gold. “Mr Gold, could you please do something?”

“Yes, Miss West.” He took hold of Emma’s arm and began to guide her away from the shop, letting go of her when she flailed enough to nearly break his nose. She began to storm around the side of the shop, looking for any kind of way in.

“Wait!”

His voice was a low hiss as the alarm finally silenced, and Emma looked back over her shoulder to see him limping after her as fast as he could go. Despite her better judgement, she waited, because he was looking as furtive as she was feeling.

“It’s your boy, isn’t it? That’s the ‘thing’ you’ve left inside.”

Emma didn’t dare agree or contradict him.

“Look, I’ll go and find him and bring him out to you, ok? I can get back inside. Just wait here, and I’ll go and get him.”

Emma shook her head. “Henry’s scared of you,” she said. “He’ll hide.”

“Believe me, I’m a pro at hide and seek.” There was a long pause, as if he was steeling himself to say something. “My own son’s his age.”

It wasn’t a lie. Emma had been told so many lies over the course of her life that she had learned to recognise them almost by instinct. Suddenly, Mr Gold gained a whole new aspect to him that he’d never had before.

“Please, as a fellow parent, just let me back in to get him.”

“I can’t do that, it’s more than my job’s worth and I need this job. I’ll go in and fetch him. Just wait here.”

He was gone then, limping around towards the yard, and Emma didn’t have the strength of will to call him back. What could would it have done anyway? Maybe it would be best just to let him go. Henry would know to hide at closing time and would probably still be hiding, or he would have made his way down to the tent to wait for her. Henry was sensible, far more sensible than any ten-year-old had any business being, and Emma felt a great wave of guilt wash over her, for she highly suspected that it was the transient life that he’d always led with her that had caused him to be so sensible in the first place.

She shook herself out of her self-loathing and began to follow Gold around the building, determined to get back inside by any means necessary.

When Emma reached the yard, she stopped and peered around the gates. Gold walked straight past the security guard in his little hut, but then, Gold cut a very striking figure in his uniform and it would be above suspicion anyway. There probably wasn’t a lot of point in her attempting to take refuge in audacity and do the same thing.

She ducked back out onto the street, pressing herself flat against the gates and wondering what to do next. The best thing would be to create some kind of distraction so that the guard would come and investigate and then she could slip inside whilst his back was turned, but that left her with the problem of the key code to get in through the back door. Why was sneaking out of buildings always so much easier than sneaking into them?

Emma was looking around for an appropriate distraction, figuring that the keycode was probably either 12345 or, if they were being clever, 64557, when she heard voices in the yard behind her. A moment later, someone came through the gates. Emma tried to look nonchalant, but it evidently didn’t work as the person immediately stopped and came over to her.

“Can I help you?”

It was Belle, the lady from the customer service counter who had covered for her and Henry yesterday morning, and Emma didn’t know whether to be happy to see her or not. On the one hand, she probably knew their secret, on the other hand, well, she could definitely use that secret against them were Emma to come straight out and confirm it for her. She just stared at Belle blankly for a few moments whilst she worked out what to say.

“I, erm, no, I just…”

“You got shut out before closing time,” Belle said softly. “You’re staying in the store overnight, aren’t you?”

Emma nodded, there was really no use in denying it. “My son’s inside,” she said. “I need to get back to him. Gold was going to look for him and bring him out, but really, I need to get in, not the other way round.”

Belle nodded. “OK, I’ll see what I can do.” She didn’t ask any questions, didn’t wonder why they were staying in the store, she just sprang into action mode, taking her phone out of her bag.

“You’re really going to help?” A stranger offering help had been such a rare occurrence in Emma’s life thus far that she couldn’t help but be suspicious of it.

“Well, you wouldn’t be living in a department store for the fun of it, and I’m not in a position to help you in any other way right now, so yes, I’m going to help you get back inside.” Belle had dialled a number and her phone was ringing. “Hi Walter!” she said brightly. “Yes, it’s Belle, I know I only spoke to you half a minute ago. Sorry to be a pain, but can you do me a huge favour and check if the goods lift is locked? I’d come back and do it myself, but I’ll miss the last bus. Oh, you’re an angel, thank you. See you tomorrow.”

She hung up and stowed the phone back in her bag before peering around the yard gates in the same furtive manner that Emma had done herself.

“Come on, he’s gone.” She waved Emma through the gates and the two women ran across the yard on light feet, Belle steering Emma out of sight of the goods lift. It was a good thing that she hadn’t tried to get in on her own because the key code turned out to be 41873.

“Month and year the store opened,” Belle muttered. “Hang a left then a left then straight on to the end of the corridor, you’ll come out in the shop, but you’ve probably learned that already. Good luck.”

With that, Belle was racing down the steps again to be out of the yard before Walter the unseen security guard got back from checking the goods lift for her, and the door was swinging shut between them.

She was in.

Now all she had to do was find Henry and make sure that they both avoided Gold.

Navigating around the store was easy; she generally had a good memory for places and she’d seen enough of Mills over the last few days to know it like the back of her hand. Finding Henry, however, was going to be somewhat trickier.

She made the executive decision to start at the bottom of the store and work her way up; Henry was likely to have come back down to the tent to hide whilst the place closed up.

She made her way into the Outdoors department and picked her way through the racks of suitcases down towards the tent, keeping an eye out for Gold.

“Henry?” she whispered. “Henry, are you here?”

There was a rustle a couple of feet away from her, and she looked over in the display of fake trees and birds, intended as a showpiece for various binoculars and specialist cameras.

Henry’s face appeared between two bushes.

“I heard someone coming,” he thought. “I hoped it was you. How did you get back in?”

“I…”

The heavy tread of uneven, limping footsteps clanking down the stopped escalator had Emma diving into the fake bushes alongside Henry. There wasn’t a lot of wiggle room.

“Hello?” It was Gold. “Hello, is there anyone here? Henry? Your ma’s waiting outside.”

Henry and Emma looked at each other, neither of them daring to breathe as Gold came round the corner, looking all around him in every nook and cranny. He went past them, but then came upon their tent, crouching down to unzip it.

Their luggage was still there with its post-it notes, and Emma watched Gold sit back on his heels and scrub a hand over his face.

“You sneaky miss,” he muttered. “No wonder you were adamant that you had to get back inside rather than him coming out to you.”

He gave a long, heavy sigh and pulled himself back to his feet, grimacing as his ankle wobbled. Despite the fear of not knowing what he was going to do with the now irrefutable evidence that they were living in the store, Emma couldn’t help a pang of sympathy for him.

He looked around, and his eyes alighted on their hiding place. Emma realised just a moment too late that the corner of her bag was sticking out from between the bushes. There was a tense stand-off for what felt like hours, but could only have been a couple of minutes at the maximum.

Finally, Gold shrugged. “If you don’t come in the front door you’re not my problem.”

He moved away from the display, and Emma listened until his footsteps up the escalator and away through the store had died away, before she turned to Henry.

“Do you think we can trust him?”

Emma thought back to her previous conversation with him, about how he had a son Henry’s age, and how he needed to keep his job. He must know what she was going through, surely. He wouldn’t turn them out onto the streets, not if he had kids of his own. He wouldn’t do that to a child. She had no idea what might happen come morning, but tonight, she was fairly sure that they were safe.

“Yes, Henry. I think we can.”


	8. Chapter 8

It was Christmas Eve, and despite everything, Henry was feeling rather upbeat about it. They had snuck out of Mills with the cleaners like normal, and they had spent most of the rest of the day walking around town trying to keep warm, holing up in the library when it got too cold to stay outside. 

Unfortunately, the library was closing early due to it being Christmas Eve, and so they had come back to the slightly less well-stocked and slightly more upmarket library that was the Mills book department. Gold hadn't said anything as he'd let them in, but at least he hadn't stopped them. Maybe because he hadn't seen them leave in the morning, he could claim some kind of plausible deniability for himself.

Mum had gone to check on the bags, and Henry was sitting in his usual armchair, tucked away behind a pillar, hidden from the view of the cash desk by a strategically placed display of Harry Potter merchandise. The display had not been strategically placed there when Henry had first started hanging around in the department, but he had moved it by inches with no one noticing and now he had quite the cosy hideaway.

"Pst!"

Apparently, not quite hidden away enough. Cautiously, Henry looked over the top of his book to see Astrid from the tearoom peeping around the Harry Potter merchandise. She smiled at him and squeezed past the display, catching the life-size sorting hat as it toppled precariously from its perch.

"I thought I might find you here; I've seen you here a couple of times."

Henry didn't say anything, very much wishing that Mum would come back from the camping section in the nick of time and rescue him from whatever predicament was about to unfold. Although, then again... He thought of the past couple of evenings, of the sell-by food packed away separately in the fridge ready for them so that they wouldn't have to hunt for it, the very splattered chocolate cake.

"Leroy and I clubbed together and used our staff discount to get you some things." She handed him a small carrier bag from the food hall. "Stuff that's got really long sell-by dates that you wouldn't get to have ordinarily. You know, since it's Christmas tomorrow and all."

Henry looked inside the bag. There was a Christmas pudding, a bag of candied nuts, a pack of Christmas cake slices, and a single serving bottle of mulled wine along with a selection of confectionary.

"There are also instructions on how to work the microwave without blowing out the plug," Astrid added helpfully. "They're on the back of the receipt. I know it's bad form to include receipts, but I didn't want you to be accused of pinching it."

Henry just stared at the gift for a long time, completely unsure of what to say. He and Mum had relied on the goodwill of strangers in the past, but this was the first time he could remember that something had been given to him completely unbidden and out of the blue like this. Astrid was about to squeeze back out past the sorting hat (it was a good job that it was supposed to look battered) when he realised that he hadn't actually said anything to her, least of all expressed his gratitude.

"Thank you," he blurted out. "And thank Leroy too."

Astrid smiled. "You're welcome. I think everyone deserves to have nice things at Christmas."

"How did you know?" Henry asked. "About us, I mean."

"Well, I knew that someone had been taking the sell-by food overnight, because you saved me a job sorting it and clearing it out in the morning. And I knew that I hadn't broken the microwave and it had been working perfectly fine when I went home, so someone else must have broken it between me going home and me coming back in the morning."

"Yeah, sorry about that."

"It's ok." Astrid waved away his worries. "Leroy's a master with a screwdriver, he had it back up and running again in no time. And everyone's so used to everything going wrong around me that it wasn't exactly unexpected. Breaking the microwave is really quite minor compared with some of my other kitchen-based mishaps."

Henry laughed. "I'm sorry you got the blame though."

Astrid shrugged. "My shoulders are broad. Have a great Christmas."

"Thanks. I'm sure we will. How... How did you know that it was me? Out of all the people in the store?"

Well, that took a bit of detective work. Leroy and I figured out that someone must be staying in the store overnight, and we voiced our theory to Belle, what with her seeing everyone coming and going. I mean, I would have asked Gold because he really sees everyone coming and going, but he scares me witless. Anyway, Belle confirmed it and said that it was you. Like I said, we've seen you around here a lot in the last few days. No one spends that much time in a department store not buying anything."

Henry was slightly worried as to how many other people had noticed them. At least the sphere of people who knew for certain seemed to be limited to Belle, Gold, Astrid, and Leroy, all of whom he was fairly sure that he could trust not to betray their secret to someone with less benign intentions.

"Henry?"

Mum was back, peering around the display where Astrid was blocking her way. The waitress gave a cheerful wave and squeezed back out.

"Merry Christmas!"

Mum stared at her retreating back for a long time, then she looked at Henry, then back towards Astrid, who had long since vanished into the crowd, up towards the tearoom again.

"Have I wandered into a parallel universe?" She came into Henry's cubby hole, settling herself down on the floor in front of him and taking a look in the carrier bag. "God, I haven't had mulled wine for years. What's going on?"

Henry regaled Astrid's tale, not entirely sure that he wasn't in a parallel universe himself. For a long time, Mum didn't speak.

"I suppose that it just goes to show that there are good people in the world after all," she said eventually. "I've always been sceptical of the idea of the kindness of strangers. I guess that you and I have seen so little of it over the years that I just thought it didn't exist. You never get something for nothing; people always want something in exchange for their help. But Astrid, Leroy, Belle, Gold... They've all helped us out, in their own ways, and expected nothing in return."

"Maybe it's the Christmas spirit," Henry suggested.

Mum gave a huff of laughter. "Yeah, maybe you're right. It's almost a shame it's so close to closing time. We could have gone out again and shown Gold that we actually have a Mills bag this time. I'm not sure whether it would make him laugh or send him into apoplexy."

"I hope not apoplexy." Henry had no idea what apoplexy was, but it sounded painful, and since Gold had already proved himself trustworthy with their secret, he didn't really want anything too bad to happen to him.

Mum smiled. “Yeah, it’s Christmas. We shouldn’t really wish anything bad on anyone. And I don’t think Gold’s as bad as I make him out to be most of the time.” She paused, getting comfortable leaning against the armchair before looking back up at Henry. “He told me that he had a son your age, actually, so he probably doesn’t want to ruin your Christmas.”

“Huh.” It was strange to think of Gold as having a life and a family outside of the store. It had been weird enough seeing him in a Christmas jumper on that first morning when they were sneaking out.

He wondered if Gold’s son knew about the little romance between Gold and Belle, and what he thought of it. Henry personally thought that it was rather sweet, but then again, it wasn’t his dad. He leaned back in his chair, wondering about Mum and the dark-haired woman from the staircase. He was definitely rooting for that romance, whoever the mysterious stranger turned out to be.

X

Belle was in a quandary, and she was also in a hurry. It was only ten minutes before the cash desks closed and the food hall was already beginning to wind down for the night with fresh produce being packed away back to the central chillers. It wasn’t her fault that she had left her Christmas shopping so late. Well, it wasn’t exactly her fault. She had indeed left it until the last possible day, but she hadn’t intended to leave it till the last possible moment. She’d intended to buy on her lunch break, but things being as they stood, she hadn’t had one. It had been all she could do to persuade Zelena to let her off the desk twenty minutes before her time, because she’d spent her entire lunch break politely telling a customer that no, her Christmas hamper order was not ready for collection, because all hamper orders had to be placed before the nineteenth of December in order to guarantee collection by Christmas Eve, and since this customer had only placed her order yesterday, naturally, the hamper was not ready.

How it had taken over half an hour for her to get this into the woman’s skull was beyond Belle, but hey, unbelievable customers were all part and parcel of the Christmas experience.

Anyway, she had ten minutes left to buy, and she was stumped. At least it was only one gift. Indeed, it was rather a spur of the moment decision to buy it in the first place, which was why everything had been so rushed.

She’d decided to get Alistair something. Nothing big, nothing ostentatious, just a little something to remind him that no matter how bleak his Christmas might look, what with his son being away with his mother again, there was still someone who cared for him and wanted to make sure that his day had a little cheer in it.

“I recommend the caramel, personally.”

Belle looked down to see the little boy who was living in the store standing next to her. His mum was a few metres away, looking at a display of Turkish delight. She was carrying a small food hall carrier bag, and Belle smiled, glad that Astrid and Leroy’s gift had reached its intended recipients. The boy was looking at the rows of chocolate bars with the eye of a practised connoisseur, and he beamed at her beatifically.

“I love caramel,” Belle admitted. “The thing is, I’m not buying it for me.”

“Mr Gold?” the boy suggested. There was something distinctly mischievous in his eyes, but it was softened by a sparkle of genuine hope.

“I… What… How did you…” Belle’s shoulders sagged. “Yes.”

“Hmm. He strikes me more as a peppermint person.” The boy reached up for the peppermint bar in its shining turquoise and silver wrapper, but he couldn’t quite reach. Belle grabbed it.

“Yes, I think you’re right. I know he drinks peppermint tea; I’ve smelled it in the flask he keeps behind the customer service desk.”

Her companion gave an emphatic nod. “You know, I think I could be a personal shopper. That’s what they do, isn’t it? Tell you what to buy?”

Belle laughed at the summation. “Pretty much. Thanks for the suggestion, kid.”

“My name’s Henry.” He held out a hand solemnly, and Belle shook it.

“I’m Belle.”

“I know. It’s on your name tag.” Henry looked around the food hall. “Who’s that lady over there?” he asked. “We’ve seen her around a few times, but she never wears a name tag.”

Belle followed his sightline, but before he could point out the person in question, the five-minute warning came over the PA system and she had to rush to the checkout to pay for Alistair’s gift. By the time she returned to the confectionary section, Henry and his mother had both disappeared, no doubt slipping away to find a place to hide whilst the store closed down. Belle felt her stomach flip-flop in her mouth.

She should have warned them about the party.


	9. Chapter 9

Emma was beginning to think that staying in the store over Christmas was actually the worst idea that she'd ever had. It would have been all right if it had not been for the staff party going on and taking over what sounded like the entire store.

She and Henry were once again secreted away in the cleaning cupboard where they had spent all their closing times before, and they had been quite happily listening to the sounds of customers leaving the store and departments shutting down, until they had come to the gradual and horrifying realisation that the staff were definitely not going home and the Christmas music volume was being turned up along with the level of chatter.

Under the cover of the loud music and talking, Emma had rested her forehead against the inside of the cleaning cupboard door, let out a stream of profanity that Henry had obediently covered his ears for, and wondered what to do next.

Henry, sensible soul that he was, upturned two empty buckets to use as seats in the cramped space and settled in for the long haul, opening the candied nuts from the goody bag that Astrid had given them and offering them to Emma. She took a handful, sitting down heavily on her bucket.

"Hey, at least we're inside," Henry said. "I wouldn't want to have to try and sneak in past all this."

"Yeah. I mean, they've all got to go home at some point." Emma paused. "I hope no one's sick and they need to get into this cupboard for cleaning materials."

"There are plenty of other cupboards, Mum, there's one on every floor."

"Yeah, but you know our luck. They’ll want this one." She sighed. "Although, that said, they'll probably be so drunk that they won't even notice us."

Henry gave a snort of laughter and they continued to munch nuts in peace for a while, listening to the festivities going on outside. Emma wondered what their friends were doing. 

Finally, she jumped up, almost hitting her head on the shelf above her, and Henry raised an eyebrow.

“Come on, we can’t stay in here all night,” she said. “There’s not going to be anyone in the basement. If we can get down there without anyone noticing us, then I reckon we can get back to the tent and hole up in there nice and snugly.”

Henry did not look at all convinced by Emma’s confidence in this plan, and she couldn’t really say that she blamed him. It was not one of her better ones, but she was getting claustrophobic sitting inside this cupboard, and she was working on her previous principle of everyone being too drunk to notice anything funny going on.

She bent down and peered through the keyhole. The cleaning cupboard being tucked away as it was, there was no one in her immediate sight line, even though she could definitely hear people close by. It was risky, but she thought that it was worth trying to make a break for it.

Carefully, she inched open the cupboard door and peeped through the crack. No one around, although she could see people talking together in the department beyond. Hopefully none of them would look in this direction.

“Come on, we’re clear. Let’s move out.”

Emma opened the door fully and Henry sped out behind her, making for the switched off escalator and then immediately hanging a swift left and jumping behind a plant pot as someone started coming up the escalator. It was Zelena, and the expression on her face was that of a woman on a mission. For a moment, Emma was worried that she’d seen them, and that this determination was to get them out of the store, but she marched straight past their terrible hiding place without giving them a second glance.

Henry looked at her, and it was clear from his face that he didn’t think much of her plan to get back down to the basement with no one noticing.

“Ok, so we’re not off to a great start,” Emma hissed. “Still, we’re out now and there’s not a lot of point in turning back.”

The escalator was clear by this point, and they hurried down it, not worrying about the amount of noise that they were making – the staff were making more than enough to drown them out.

Once they were down on the next level, it became clear that the majority of the staff were gathered in the Christmas decorations area, which they were going to have to make their way through in order to reach the next set of escalators. On the one hand, more people meant that they could hopefully blend in with the crowd better, but on the other hand, there were far more opportunities for someone to see them and realise that they really weren’t supposed to be there.

Emma dropped into a low crouch as they entered the fray, and Henry followed suit, the two of them peering out from behind a tinsel Christmas tree. They could see their goal beyond the racks of baubles and wreaths, and Emma tried to work out what the best way of getting there would be. The middle of the decorations area had been cleared into an impromptu dancefloor, and several staff were jiving about to a version of _Underneath the Tree_ that sounded like it was being played underwater. Emma thought that a shop like Mills really ought to have a better sound system, before she realised that it wasn’t the sound system and was in fact a karaoke machine, with one of the waitresses from the tearoom doing the honours. Thankfully, it wasn’t Astrid. Emma didn’t think that she would be able to look their benefactor in their eye after such a performance.

“We could do a Macbeth,” Henry suggested. Emma just stared at him. “What? I’ve been reading Tales from Shakespeare in the books section. It was the kids’ version!”

“I didn’t even realise that there was a kids’ version of Macbeth,” Emma said. “Did they edit out all the cold-blooded murder or what?”

“Nah, they just kind of skimmed over it quickly. Anyway, we can do the whole Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane thing.”

“Henry, you are making no sense and I don’t think that assassinating a king is going to help us here. I don’t think assassinating Regina Mills would help us either, especially as I don’t know which one of these many drunkards she is.”

Henry sighed and picked up the gold tinsel tree he was hiding behind, creeping along with it for a couple of feet and then putting it down again.

“Right, ok. I get it now.” Emma picked up her own tree and they made their way slowly around the edge of the dancefloor, stopping every time someone looked in their direction, until they made it to the safety of a rack of baubles, just as Zelena came back down the other escalator that she’d gone up. Whatever she’d been looking for up there, she evidently hadn’t found it, as she was just as determinedly walking towards Emma and Henry’s own goal. Emma rolled her eyes.

“What is it with that woman and being where we want to be?” she asked. “She’s at her work Christmas party for crying out loud, you’d think that she would be in here getting sloshed like the rest of them.”

They waited in the bauble aisle for a little while longer, listening to the increasingly dreadful karaoke, but Zelena did not reappear, and Emma decided that their position was too precarious for them to stay so close to the main revel as they were. It was time to make a move. Abandoning the Christmas trees, they crept down the aisles on hands and knees until they had a clear path to the escalators. Emma wondered if trying to slide down the handrail would be quieter than going down on foot but gave it up as a bad job. She’d only end up in a heap at the bottom with a broken neck if she tried.

The ground floor was blessedly quiet, and they were almost on the home stretch. There were sounds of hustle and bustle coming from the food hall, no doubt where the drinks and nibbles for the party were being dispensed, but thankfully, they didn’t need to go through that way to get down to the basement. They just had to get through jewellery.

It was dark in the jewellery section, all shut up ready for the Christmas break, apart from the flashing red lights in the corners of all the display units showing that the alarm system was activated. Some of the glass cases were ominously empty, and Emma knew that they contained treasures so precious they were locked up tight in safes overnight. She read the price tag next to one such empty space and almost fainted. Some people had more money than sense.

She dived down under the unit as she heard footsteps, pulling Henry with her. Whoever it was seemed to be as furtive as they were, and Emma peeped out to see who it was. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw that it was Gold, and not just because of the cheerful snowman jumper that he was wearing.

He didn’t see them, and he continued creeping in the direction of the basement escalators. Emma allowed herself a little sigh of relief. At least if they went down now, Gold knew their secret and it wouldn’t matter if he saw them. Maybe he had gone down with the specific intent of making sure that they were all right, although she wasn’t sure that he cared that much about them. She was about to make a move when more footsteps came through, the quick clacking of high heels followed by the heavy thud of steel-capped boots.

“Honestly Killian, why are you still in costume? You look ridiculous now that there are no children around.”

It was Zelena’s voice, and Emma peered around the glass to see the two of them entering into the jewellery section for reasons unknown but, Emma thought, highly unlikely to be benign. She knitted her brows as she watched them moving through the display racks.

“Well, I’ll gladly take it off if you want me to, Miss West, but since it’s so bloody hot, I’m not wearing anything underneath it.” Killian waggled his eyebrows and Zelena made a suitable noise of disgust, but then they were out of sight and out of hearing. Emma looked at Henry, who was looking just as concerned by these developments as she felt.

“I swear that there’s something fishy going on here,” she muttered. “I’m sure that Santa should not be spending so much time in the jewellery department. Anyway, they’ve gone. Let’s make a break for it.”

They took to their heels towards the escalator and crept down it as quietly as they could, keeping an eye out for Gold. He didn’t seem to be anywhere about, and Emma breathed a sigh of relief. They were almost home and dry. Almost safe. There were no other staff around in the basement, and the sounds of the party above them were muffled.

They began to pick their way back to the tent through the fake bushes they’d hidden in the previous night, and Emma caught sight of Gold. He was sitting on a camping chair a few feet from their tent, his head in his hands, rocking back and forth slightly. Emma was more than a little alarmed until she heard his mutterings.

“I _hate_ Christmas parties,” he growled.

Emma peered through the bushes. He really seemed to be extremely upset, and she wondered if there was anything that they ought to do to help him, never mind the fact that they were supposed to be staying out of sight. He’d helped them after all, by keeping their secret. The least that they could do was return the favour.

“Are you ok?” she hissed. Gold almost jumped out of his skin, then turned around and saw her face. He came over and crouched down beside her.

“I’m not even going to ask how you managed to get through the crush upstairs,” he whispered. “And no, I’m not.”

“Anything we can do?”

Gold gave their hiding place the onceover and scoffed. “All things considered, I really don’t think you’re in a position to be offering help or advice.”

“Hey, just trying to return a good deed here. If it’s not wanted, then I’ll gladly make my way back to my tent.”

Gold sighed, and he stayed silent for a long time before speaking in barely a whisper through gritted teeth. “I’m a recovering alcoholic and free-flowing champagne is not exactly helpful.” He gave a snort of humourless laughter. “I’m hiding as much as you are.”

“Well, you’re welcome to use any of the tents that aren’t ours; there’s not really enough room for you as well as all our bags.

“Thanks. I think…” Gold tailed off, and then quickly stood up, shoving the fake bushes back in front of Emma as someone came down the escalator.

“Mr Gold! What are you doing down here in Camping and Outdoors, of all places!” It was Zelena. God, the woman was like a bad penny, she just kept turning up.

“Zelena, if you proceed to tell me that I should be on the outside of the building…”

“No, no, no, of course not! You should be upstairs enjoying yourself like everyone else. Champagne and nibbles!”

“I’ll pass, thanks.” He sidestepped neatly to hide Emma and Henry as Zelena came up to him.

“What are you doing down here?” she asked. “Anyone would think that you were hiding in dark corners for dark purposes.”

“No, just looking for a bit of peace and quiet.”

“Aw.” Zelena pouted, producing a sprig of mistletoe from behind her back. “Still, we can have a little party of two down here.”

“I’d really rather not.” He sidestepped again but Zelena had him cornered.

“You know, Mr Gold, I think I’m a little bit tipsy.”

“Miss West, if anyone in this building knows tipsy, it’s me, and I can tell you that you are stone cold sober, so please let me go home.”

He was almost out past her when Zelena grabbed his shoulders and dived in to kiss him. Above her, Emma heard a faint little gasp, and she glanced up to see Belle at the top of the escalator.

Emma closed her eyes and groaned; it was turning into a terrible romantic movie full of misunderstandings, and there was nothing that she could do to stop it. She wanted to tell Belle that all was not lost, that her little flirtation with Gold was still intact, that Zelena’s attentions were wholly unwanted, but she couldn’t exactly do that whilst hidden in a plastic forest.

Thankfully, cinematic pathos did not play out in real life, and Belle did not run from the scene in tears. This was reality and not a terrible romantic movie. Belle and Gold knew each other, and Emma knew that they were united in their hatred of Zelena.

Belle continued her descent down the escalator just as Gold succeeded in pushing Zelena off him.

“Alistair! I’ve been looking all over for you.” Belle marched smartly up to him, linking her arm through his and giving Zelena her sweetest smile as she pulled him away. “Come on, I’ve called us a taxi.”

“Where are we…” Gold cottoned on and leaned in to peck a kiss to Belle’s cheek. “Thank you, darling. What would I do without you?”

They moved away further into the camping section, leaving a fuming Zelena to stomp back up the escalator. As soon as she was out of earshot, Belle burst into a giggling fit, covering her mouth with her hand.

“I really do have a taxi waiting,” she said. “I can drop you at your place if you like.”

Gold shook his head, a blush rising in his cheeks. “It’s ok, it’s only ten minutes’ walk.”

“It’s snowing out.” Belle bit her bottom lip. “And with your ankle, you know.”

Gold relented. “Ok. Thank you, Belle.” He paused. “I was thinking… Since I haven’t got Bae this year… Would you like to come for Christmas lunch tomorrow? There’s enough food, I got enough for two. Of course, you probably have your own plans…”

“No, no.” Belle’s face lit up brighter than a Christmas tree. “No, that would be wonderful. Thank you, Alistair.”

She went up on her toes to press her lips against his, a much more welcome kiss than the one Zelena had given him, and Emma smiled as Gold returned it. A little Christmas miracle after all.

She waited until they had made their way up the escalator and the coast was definitely clear before she and Henry made their way back to their tent. She was surprised to find a small red envelope waiting for them. The envelope just read _Happy Christmas_ in spidery hand. Inside was a card covered in dancing cartoon reindeer.

_To Henry and Mum._

_Best wishes for a happy Christmas and much better luck for all of us in the new year._

_Alistair Gold_

Emma put the card up in pride of place on top of their luggage.

Definitely a little Christmas miracle.


	10. Chapter 10

During the course of his ten years, Henry had experienced several weird and wonderful Christmas days, but he had never yet experienced one in a closed department store.

It was nice not to have to wake up at the crack of dawn in order to sneak out with the cleaners, and Henry decided that it would be best to let Mum sleep in. Everything would be back to normal tomorrow when the store opened again for the Boxing Day sales, and they needed to make the most of this day of rest. They would have the store to themselves for the entire day, and there would be no need to hide away in any cleaning closets.

He quickly got dressed and made his way out of the tent as quietly as possible. He could see the stocking Mum had hung up for him, borrowed from the Christmas decoration department last night after all the staff had finally given up the ghost and gone home. They’d got to the stage of thinking that they weren’t going to be the only ones sleeping in the store, the party had gone on for that long.

There were some nicely wrapped parcels in the stocking, and Henry came to the conclusion that must have been what Mum had popped out to get when she’d got locked out the night before last. It was nice to know that he would be getting something this Christmas that was definitely his and wouldn’t have to be returned to its rightful place on the shelves later, but he would leave it for now and open it when Mum was awake. Christmas presents were a luxury to be appreciated, and anyway, he was hungry. Thanks to the party, they hadn’t been able to get their usual sandwiches from the tearoom for dinner, and although the Christmas cake and candied nuts from Astrid’s treasure trove had been very tasty, they weren’t exactly enough to fill him up till breakfast time.

Henry began the trek up the escalators to the tearoom. There was no hurry, and no need to be furtive, and now that he had the entire shop to himself, he could admire all the Christmas displays properly. He’d seen them all before, of course, many times, but now there were no other shoppers about, and he didn’t have to worry about security guards.

At least, he hoped that he didn’t have to worry about security guards. They didn’t usually come around in the day, but then, during the day the shop was open. Henry paused halfway up the final escalator and took a look around him, but there was no sign of anyone else in the shop. They were in the clear.

The food that Astrid had set aside for them after the tearoom had closed the previous evening was still there, and most of it was still good to eat – Henry decided to throw away anything with milk or cream in, just in case, but the bread products were fine. He looked at the microwave, remembering the instructions on the back of the receipt. He was very much looking forward to Christmas pudding later, even if they didn’t have a turkey with all the trimmings to go with it. It was so rare for them to have a turkey with all the trimmings anyway that he didn’t really miss it, and this was already shaping up to be the best Christmas he and Mum had had for a long time.

Not that there had been anything wrong with his previous Christmases. Henry hastened to add that thought; just in case there were any telepaths in the vicinity who thought that he was being ungrateful for what he’d had before. It was just that this one was so different, and so much warmer and safer than some of his previous ones.

It was only once Henry was coming back down the escalators, a bag of slightly stale but still tasty croissants in his hand, ready to surprise Mum with breakfast, that he realised that something was very wrong.

Namely, they were not alone in the store when they really should have been.

He was passing into the jewellery hall when he heard the whispers. Almost a week of living in the store had taught him all the best hiding spots, and that paranoia wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, and he dropped down behind a display case as he listened closely for the source of the sound. For a moment, he wondered if it was just his mind playing tricks on him, that it was the pipes creaking or the central heating powering up, but no, when he focussed his ears, he could definitely hear voices.

For a while, he wondered if it was the security guards after all, but he couldn’t hear the crackle of the radio static that accompanied them whenever they spoke. They tended to work alone, and there were definitely at least two people around the corner.

They also sounded, from the quietness of their voices, barely more than a hiss, to be intruding just as much as Henry and Emma were. There was no need for the security guards to whisper. They had every right to be there and to make as much noise in the empty shop as they needed to.

The voices came a little closer, and Henry shrank back against his display cabinet as he saw their owners.

“Killian, why are we still in costume?” Santa’s elf was saying.

“Because it’s the perfect cover. When we get out, all anyone will see is Santa Claus and his elf with a big bag of presents, going to distribute good cheer to widows and orphans or something similar. No one will think that we’re at all suspicious.”

Henry raised an eyebrow, because Killian in his very nature was suspicious, and he’d never seen a pair less likely to be distributing good cheer to anyone, let alone orphans. If Henry was an orphan and Killian had turned up, he’d be wondering what he’d done all year to get put on the naughty list.

“I still think this is a bad idea.”

“Honestly, Smee, you’ve got no gumption. I don’t know how you ever got into this business in the first place.”

“I know, I know, it’s just that knocking over second-hand jewellers is a bit different to breaking into a luxury department store’s safe.”

“Smee, this is our big break! You can’t start getting cold feet now!”

Henry’s eyes widened, and he shrank back against the display cabinet as far as he could as Killian and Smee came past. Thankfully, they didn’t notice him, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Well, not one that he could hold for very long. The fact still remained that a department store Santa and elf were about to rob that department store. On Christmas Day, of all days, when they thought they had the place to themselves. How had they got in? Or had they stayed in the store overnight as well?

Henry shook his head, trying to put such questions to the back of his mind. They weren’t important. What was important was that there was a burglary in process, and he had no idea what he ought to do. Well, he knew that the most sensible thing to do, of course, was to call the police, but that presented a whole new set of challenges of its own.

Namely, Killian and Smee were not the only ones trespassing, and if Henry called the police, he’d have to explain how come he was in the store to catch the burglars in the first place.

He knew that trying to confront them would not be a good idea. They were two grown men, and if they were seasoned criminals then they would not be afraid of violence, and he was a ten-year-old boy. It was madness to even think of it.

No, it looked like the best idea would be to go and wake up Mum. Mum would know what to do. She always knew what to do.

Unfortunately, getting down to the basement meant going past Killian and Smee, who were standing in front of a large painting on the wall, behind which, no doubt, the safe was hidden.

He crawled forward on hands and knees as silently as possible, listening to the two thieves talking.

“All right. Here goes nothing. You would have thought that we’d hung around here enough to get the combination by now.” Killian put down his sack and pulled off his Santa hat and beard, using the hat to mop his brow. “It would have helped if Her Majesty hadn’t kept funnelling us back to the children’s department every time she saw us in here.”

Henry used the sound of them shifting the painting to the side as cover to get a bit further towards the escalators, and he stopped again when the safe was revealed.

“All right, Smee, work your magic.”

Smee dived into the sack for something, but evidently came up empty-handed. He looked very sheepish as he stood up again, and Killian raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

“What is it?”

“I, erm, I left the stethoscope at home.”

“What?”

“The stethoscope… It’s still at home…”

Killian leaned heavily on the wall, pinching the bridge of his nose, and if the circumstances had been anything other than what they were, Henry would have found it very funny. As it was, he was still rather scared.

“I can nip and get it.” Smee’s attempt to mollify his boss did not go over well.

“Smee, the entire reason we hid in the store overnight was so that we wouldn’t have to sneak in this morning,” Killian said through gritted teeth. “Sneaking out with the goods is one thing. Sneaking out empty-handed and then sneaking back in again with a stethoscope is madness. Besides, we’re on a tight schedule here; our ride will be outside already. Come on, we’ll have to improvise. Power tools and brute force it is.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“That’s rich, coming from the man who managed to mess up the one good idea we had by leaving his equipment on the kitchen table.”

They moved away from the safe, and Henry’s heart sank as he realised that they were heading down into the basement. Power tools were housed with Camping and Outdoors. He was definitely cut off from Mum now. He just hoped that they wouldn’t wake her up and that she’d be safe in her tent.

Henry wondered if it would be possible to sneak out himself; after all, Smee and Killian had to have an escape route. He didn’t quite know where he’d go once he got out, since he’d already vetoed the police.

Maybe it would be best if he stayed up here, waited for Killian and Smee to come back with the tools and then sneak back down to wake up Mum. Although, that wouldn’t leave them with a lot of time for thinking up a plan to outsmart the bad guys. He tried to remember the layout of the basement; hopefully he could get down there and get back to the tent whilst Killian and Smee were busy elsewhere selecting the right kind of drill, or whatever they were going to use to get into the safe.

He heard footsteps coming up the escalators and tucked himself back into his hiding place between the display cabinets, giving a huge sigh of relief when he heard Mum’s voice.

“Henry? Henry, where are you?”

He peeped out and waved as she snuck into the jewellery department and she raced over to him.

“Santa’s trying to rob the jewellery safe!” he hissed as she crouched down beside him.

“Yeah, I gathered that much when he started testing electric drills outside the tent,” she muttered. “Come on, we’ve got to do something. We need to call the police.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Mum shrugged. “We don’t really have another choice. We can’t exactly thwart them ourselves.” She paused and groaned. “I left my phone in the tent downstairs.”

“It’s ok, I’m sure that we can find a phone up here.” Henry popped his head up from behind a counter and looked around for a phone. In a shop as big as Mills, there ought to be phones everywhere, even if they were just for communicating with the other departments. He spotted one at the cash desk on the far side of the room and pointed it out to Mum.

“Ok, you stay here and stay hidden.”

Mum got up and began weaving in and out of the display cases towards the phone, but before she could get there, Killian and Smee’s footsteps thundered up the escalator.

“I’m telling you that there’s someone here!” Smee was saying. “That tent flap wasn’t open when we first went down there!”

“Smee, no one sleeps in a tent in a department store.”

“We slept in a sleigh in Santa’s grotto in a department store!”

“You’re being paranoid, now get into that safe! Time’s ticking!”

Still obviously uneasy and looking around himself every ten seconds, Smee took the power drill and bolt cutters to the safe. The noise was enough that Mum and Henry could move about more freely, and they started towards the phone on the cash desk again.

The drill stopped just as they reached the phone, and Henry realised that if they made a phone call now, then Killian and Smee would hear them and their cover would be blown. Hopefully if Mum waited until they were no longer in the department, then they wouldn’t have got too far away by the time the police arrived.

Henry listened to the chinking sounds of jewellery being loaded into Santa’s sack, and his heart leapt to his mouth when the sound stopped, along with all the other sounds.

“Killian, why are there crumbs all over the floor?”

Henry looked down at the paper bag of croissants he was holding, which had left a nice little trail of crumbs all around the display cases. He looked up at Mum, hoping against hope that she had some kind of plan. Mum always had a plan. True, that was usually for keeping a roof over their heads against all the odds, not for outsmarting jewel thieves, but Mum was prepared for anything, wasn’t she?

Mum nodded, pointing towards the archway that led from the jewellery department into the rest of the store.

Then she stood up and hollered.

“Hey, idiots! Over here!”

Killian lunged forwards, leaving Smee to grab the bag of loot and dither between following his boss or making a break for it. In the end, self-preservation won out and he legged it towards the exit. Mum was leading Killian a merry dance around the display units, but Killian was also wielding a heavy pair of bolt cutters, and Henry desperately did not want them to come into contact with Mum’s head.

He had an idea. He didn’t know whether it would work or not, but he had to try. He scrabbled over to the large Christmas tree that was standing in the centre of the jewellery department, incredibly glad that Mills never did anything by halves, including decorating the store for Christmas.

The presents around the bottom of it were all just empty boxes wrapped up in shiny paper, but as he flung them aside, he came to his main goal. The tree was weighted down by chunky logs at the bottom. He grabbed one and wriggled back out from underneath the branches, sending baubles and shreds of tinsel flying in all directions.

Then he lobbed the log as hard as he could at the nearest display cabinet.

For a moment, he thought that nothing had happened, other than a very loud bang that did a great job of attracting Killian’s attention.

Then the glass splintered and cracked and shattered, and an ear-splitting alarm began to screech throughout the building.

If that didn’t bring the police, then Henry didn’t know what would.


	11. Chapter 11

“Here’s to not working on Christmas Day, and a great deal of sympathy for everyone who is.”

“Cheers.“

Belle chinked her glass of cranberry punch against Alistair’s. Knowing that he didn’t drink, she’d raided her mother’s recipe books for something suitably festive and non-alcoholic and had pulled together the punch from cinnamon, cranberry sauce, and boiling water.

"You know, if I had my way, Christmas Day would last for about three weeks,” Belle said. “One day off is not enough, and normally I can’t enjoy the respite if I know I’m going to have to go back to work and deal with people behaving extremely badly tomorrow. Sometimes I can’t decide which is worse - pre-Christmas panic or post-Christmas sales.”

“If all the shops in the country shut for a week before and a week after Christmas, that would be perfect,” Alistair mused. “Not only would everyone be forced to get organised and buy their presents earlier instead of leaving it till Christmas Eve, we’d also have enough time to just about recover before people started shopping again in the New Year.”

Belle laughed. She was having a wonderful Christmas Day so far. She and Alistair had spent the morning preparing a miniature Christmas feast, and she had given him his present. She’d intended to give it to him at the party last night, but after he’d invited her over for Christmas dinner, she’d decided to wait so that he could have it on the day instead.

He had gone very red when she’d presented it to him, mumbling about not having anything to give to her in return, but she’d pointed out that she was getting Christmas dinner out of him, and he’d eased up a little at that point. The turkey and roast potatoes were cooking nicely in the oven, and now she and Alistair were sitting on the sofa, watching the lights on the Christmas tree twinkling.

“This is wonderful,” she said. “Thank you so much for inviting me. It would have been a lonely Christmas Day on my own. I’d have spent most of the day asleep.”

“It is good to have company,” Alistair agreed, and Belle felt a huge pang of sympathy for him.

“I’m sorry, you must be missing Bae.”

Alistair nodded. “I am. I called him this morning and left a message, thanking him for my gift. Hopefully he’ll call back later. I’m sure he will, he’s good like that. We spent about an hour on the phone last Christmas, but it’s not the same as seeing him in person.” He paused. “Belle… I have something to confess.” He’d gone a bit pink around the ears, and Belle raised an eyebrow, wondering what he could have to say that made him so sweetly nervous.

“What’s that?”

“I didn’t just ask you here to keep me company, you know. I… I think I would have asked you anyway, even if Bae was coming. Well, if it was all right by him.”

Belle smiled. “I would have been very happy to accept no matter how many other people were coming.”

The only thing that could have made the scene any better would have been the addition of a nice sprig of mistletoe hanging from the light fitting above them, so that Belle could have an excuse for kissing her host.

Well, she didn’t think that she really needed an excuse, since they’d kissed in the basement yesterday, but still, it was the principle of the thing.

"What are you thinking about?” he asked presently. Belle decided that there was no point in beating about the bush. If you don’t ask, you don’t receive, after all.

“Mistletoe,” she said. “Or rather, the lack of it.”

Alistair smiled. “A terrible decorating oversight on my part. But I’m sure that we can use our imaginations.”

Belle leaned in, her nose bumping against Alistair’s as they met in the middle, giggling a little before their lips finally met. It would have been a perfectly freeze-framed Christmas moment if a car alarm hadn’t started up a few streets away, making her jump.

“Perfect timing,” she grumbled, glaring at the window. “Although, I suppose, Christmas Day’s probably an opportune time for theft, since there’s no one around.”

The distant car alarm continued, and Alistair’s brow furrowed.

“That alarm sounds familiar,” he said. “I really don’t think that it’s a car alarm.”

Belle felt a rush of ice flood through her veins as she too recognised the distinctive alarm.

“It’s the internal alarm at Mills.”

For a full minute, the two of them just looked at each other in fear. They both knew that Henry and his mother would be in the store, and whatever had happened to set the alarm off, the police would be arriving in due course. Belle hoped that the alarm had been set off for a genuine reason and the police’s presence was really required, but that still didn’t shake the fact that the police would arrive and find a homeless mother and son trespassing in the store. On Christmas Day.

“Let’s go.” Alistair paused only to switch the oven off - Christmas lunch could wait until they’d made sure that everything was all right at Mills. They grabbed their coats, speeding out of the flat and through London’s almost empty streets, praying that they would get there before Regina or Zelena did.

They were rounding the final corner towards the yard entrance when they met Leroy and Astrid coming from the opposite direction, also at a run. Leroy was jangling a huge ring of keys, looking for the correct ones to let them into the yard, only for them to find that the gates were already open.

The four of them raced in and stopped short at the scene that met them.

X

In hindsight, Henry realised, sounding the alarm was probably not the best idea he’d ever had, because all it had served to do was to draw attention to himself, and Killian, with no thought for discretion now that the game was up, was now bounding over the display cabinets towards him with an agility that the puffy Santa costume belied. Not having long enough legs to be able to vault over the obstacles in his way like Killian, Henry was stuck weaving in and out of the counters on his mission to reunite with Mum, who was charging after Killian with a roar of ‘GET AWAY FROM MY SON!’

Smee was nowhere to be seen, taking advantage of the confusion to escape with the loot. The alarm was so loud and shrill that Henry thought his ears would start bleeding soon.

Ultimately, he knew that he was going to be cornered, and he closed his eyes as he realised that he could go no further. He’d only had a short life and it didn’t take a long time for it to flash before his eyes.

Killian grabbed him, throwing him over his shoulder.

“You’re coming with me as insurance,” he snarled, taking off towards the exit after Smee, before starting to shout for his colleague, calling him every name under the sun and some that Henry hadn’t heard before and wasn’t sure were even English.

“Stay back!” he shouted at Mum as she raced after them, waving the bolt cutters. “One more step and he gets it!”

Mum took a step back, and Henry took advantage of the moment of quiet to kick Killian squarely in the chest, making him swear with the pain and drop the bolt cutters. Mum launched forward again now that he was unarmed, but Killian was nothing if not determined. Not even Henry’s wildly flailing fists and legs could stop him as he ran through the store out towards the yard.

“Smee, you faithless rat!” he was yelling. “Get back here!”

They raced out into the yard, Mum catching up with them and lunging at Killian just as they got down the steps towards the unmarked white van that was standing waiting by the bins. She caught his waist, succeeding only in pulling his trousers down, but it was enough to make him lose his balance, and enough for Henry to fight his way free of Killian’s vice-like grip. Mum got to her feet in a flash and crash tackled Killian again, yelling at Henry to make a run for it as Smee, on the point of getting into the passenger seat of the van with the sack of jewellery, dropped his prize and came over to help his boss, loyalty once more winning out on seeing him being pounded by an extremely irate mother.

As much as Henry wanted to stay and help Mum, he knew that she was only in this precarious position because she was protecting him, so he legged it towards the open gates, grabbing the fallen sack on his way. It was heavier than it looked and dragged along the ground.

“Get back here, you little brat!”

Looking over his shoulder, Henry felt his eyes bug out of his head as he saw Zelena scramble out of the driver’s seat of the van and come after him. He had a head start on her, but she had longer legs and could run something fierce when she wasn’t wearing high heels. They were engaged in a tug of war for the sack when Belle, Gold, Leroy, and Astrid arrived on the scene, rushing into the yard before pulling up in confusion. Zelena didn’t see them, too focussed on wrestling the sack away from Henry.

Leroy and Astrid wasted no time in going over to pull Smee off Emma and Emma off Killian. Belle was on her phone, hopefully talking to the police.

Gold came over just as Zelena succeeded in pulling the sack away from Henry.

“Yes!”

Her jubilation was short-lived as Gold yanked the sack from her flailing arm and opened it, raising an eyebrow as he looked inside.

“Part of your Christmas bonus, Zelena?”

“Yes, no, of course not, give me that! Thank God you’ve arrived, Gold, I was just in the process of apprehending these two jewel thieves; as you can see, Killian and Smee have been nobly assisting me.”

“What?” Henry exclaimed, unable to believe the litany of lies that Zelena was now spinning. “That’s not what happened!” he said, desperate for Gold to believe him. On the one hand, he knew that Gold had no reason to like or side with Zelena, but on the other hand, he’d only known Emma and Mum for a few days; they hadn’t exactly been the picture of innocence whilst he’d known them.

“Right,” Gold said flatly, refusing to relinquish the sack. “Well, since this is evidence, I’m sure that the police will take good care of it when they arrive. I’m very curious as to why the goods are in Santa’s sack though, and why Santa himself is still in costume. Well, after a fashion.” Killian’s trousers were still around his ankles, and he had given up trying to fight off Astrid, who was now sitting on him. Leroy had Smee in a headlock, and Mum was standing off to one side, bent double as she caught her breath.

Satisfied that there were now enough responsible and trustworthy adults on the scene to handle everything between them, Henry left Zelena and Gold arguing and ran over to his Mum, throwing his arms around her and then springing back when she gave a little uff of pain.

“Are you all right?”

“Just bruised,” she said. “And a bit winded. Haven’t run an obstacle course like that since the van got towed in Birmingham.” She straightened up and held out her arms for Henry. “What about you? Are you hurt?”

“No. I’m ok. Zelena’s trying to make out that we’re the thieves.”

“Zelena? What’s she doing here?”

“Driving the getaway vehicle from the looks of it.”

Mum looked from the van, to Zelena and Gold, to the police car that had just pulled up in the yard. Henry hadn’t heard the sirens over the blaring alarm that was still sounding out of the store.

“Right,” she said. “Right, this might take some explaining…”


	12. Chapter 12

“So, that’s the way it all happened.”

Henry didn’t know how long he had been telling his tale to the policewoman and the social worker, both of whom were looking at him with expressions that he couldn’t quite work out. They were either completely disbelieving of everything that he had just said, or they believed it all and yet couldn’t quite believe that they believed it, or they believed him totally and were trying very hard not to laugh at all the antics that he and Emma had got themselves into over the course of the last few days whilst staying at Mills.

He looked from one to the other, and he began to think that it was probably the second option. He didn’t exactly have any reason to concoct such an elaborate lie, and although he had a very good imagination, he wasn’t sure that it would stretch to such things.

“Can I see my mum now?” he asked plainly.

“In a minute,” the policewoman said. “She’s giving her own statement, but she’ll be out soon.” She made a few official remarks and then stopped the tape. “I think that’s all that we need to talk about though, so you can go out and wait in the waiting area for her.”

Henry nodded and grabbed the polystyrene cup of hot chocolate that the social worker had given him when he had first begun his story. It was stone cold now; it seemed like he’d been in the police station for hours, but he didn’t want to leave it behind and look ungrateful.

The social worker led him out into the main waiting area, and even though Mum wasn’t there yet, Henry was incredibly glad to see that Belle, Gold, Astrid, and Leroy were all sitting around and none of them appeared to be wearing handcuffs.

“Henry!” Astrid jumped up, tripped over the coffee table stacked with back issues of magazines and flung her arms around him; Leroy reached out to grab the cup of chocolate before it went all over everywhere. Belle got up and joined in the hug.

“Are you all right?” Astrid was asking. Henry was half-convinced she was about to start patting him down for injuries, although what he could have sustained whilst sitting in a cramped little office for a couple of hours was beyond him.

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Have you seen Mum?”

There was a general consensus in the negative, and Henry began to get rather worried. At the end of the day, they had been trespassing in the store, and since Mum was the responsible adult of the two of them, she was the one who would have to be held accountable. At least the other staff who had helped them out didn’t seem to be being penalised in any way.

“Are you ok?” he asked the room at large.

“We’re all fine,” Belle said. “Not quite sure how fine we’ll be when Regina gets here, but even if she does fire us all on the spot, I don’t care. It’ll have been worth it to make sure that you two were all right. And to take down Zelena, of course.”

Gold chuckled. “I have to say that was certainly a highlight of the day. A very merry Christmas indeed.”

As macabre as the joke was, it still made Henry laugh, and he settled down between Astrid and Leroy to wait for Regina Mills, owner and impresario of Mills department store, to turn up. Or for Mum to be released, whichever came first. Astrid put an arm around him, and Henry was grateful for it, despite wishing that it was Mum instead.

To his immense relief, only a few minutes later, Mum came out of the next office. She also wasn’t wearing handcuffs, although she looked rather shaken. Henry jumped off his seat and bounded across to her, flinging his arms around her middle and refusing to let go. Maybe if he kept up this limpet hold on her then they would be completely unable to remove him, and they wouldn’t be separated by social services.

“It’s ok.” Mum held him close. “It’s ok, I’m here.”

“Are you going to stay here, though?” Henry mumbled to her sweater. “Are you going to have to go to prison?”

“No. But we’re not out of the woods just yet. It’s all going to depend on what Ms Mills says when she arrives.”

Henry, who had never met Regina Mills in all the time that they had spent in the store, was not at all mollified by this. What would happen if she decided to go ahead with the whole ‘trespassers will be prosecuted’ thing?

“Are we going to be separated?” he whispered.

Mum sighed. “I don’t know, Henry. I’m sorry. I wish I knew, but they didn’t tell me.”

Mum sat back down in the waiting area in Henry’s vacated seat, Astrid and Leroy moving up one so that Henry could perch beside her. He held onto Mum’s hand very tightly. For all he was ten years old, and for all Mum said that he was wise beyond his years, he felt very small, very young, and very frightened right now.

The time continued to tick by slowly. Although the four Mills employees were technically free to go, they were all staying, maybe out of some kind of unspoken solidarity with each other and with Henry and Mum, all of them waiting to stand alongside them when Regina Mills appeared.

“All right, will someone please tell me what’s going on here? Gold?”

Everyone in the waiting area leapt to their feet and started talking at the same time, apart from Mum. Henry himself had launched into the tale that he had just told the policewoman and social worker, but he broke off and stared at Regina Mills with the same dumbfounded expression that Mum had on her face.

Regina Mills was the brunette woman from the stairs, the one that Mum had developed just a little bit of a crush on, and it was clear that Regina was in just as much shock as Mum and Henry were, and that she wasn’t taking in any of what Belle, Gold, Astrid or Leroy were saying. Gradually, they all became aware of that too, and one by one, they trailed off, leaving the waiting area in silence.

“You.” Regina’s voice was soft, and, Henry thought, a little bit awestruck. There was no censure or accusation in it, just quiet wonder.

Mum waved awkwardly. “Erm, hi.”

“You’ve been living in my department store?” Regina shook her head in disbelief. “And I never noticed? Despite all the times I saw you in there? Despite us having an actual conversation?”

Mum shrugged. “Yeah.”

“I…” Regina pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m going to need a minute.”

At this juncture, the other four began their vehement defence of Mum and Henry again, until Regina held up a hand sharply.

“Quiet!” Everyone obeyed without hesitation. “Since you four have been aiding and abetting with the trespassing and breaking and entering, I don’t want to hear another word out of any of you.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the waiting area, Henry reflected afterwards. The only sound was the sharp tap of Regina’s shoes as she paced up and down. Henry had been in some dicey situations in his time – he’d been in several since they’d started living in Mills – but he’d never felt the same kind of tension as he felt now. It was heavy and suffocating, everyone looking at each other and no one daring to speak despite the overwhelming need for some kind of reassurance, for someone to say that it was all going to be all right. The horrible truth of the matter was that no one did know if it was going to be all right. 

At last, Regina stood still and looked over at Mum.

“I really don’t know what to say. A part of me really thinks that an example ought to be made, but at the same time, if it wasn’t for you being somewhere you shouldn’t, then my assistant manager would have got away with half the Cartier counter and none of us would have been any the wiser. And honestly, deciding to stay in the store to make sure that your son had a safe roof over his head over Christmas…”

“We’ll get new accommodation in the new year,” Mum pleaded. “This was only ever going to be a temporary arrangement; we didn’t have anywhere else to go…”

Regina nodded.

“No, I understand. I don’t think that there’s many people in the world who would have the courage and the sheer audacity do what you’ve done, Ms Swan. The unfortunate implications of it aside, it’s incredibly admirable.”

She looked around at her gathered employees, all of whom were looking rather nervous, but still defiant and rallying around Mum and Henry to the last.

“Thank you all for your swift action in helping bring down Zelena and Killian,” she said. “As for the other transgressions, well, since nothing has been taken and nothing has been damaged except in the pursuit of justice, I think that we can put this one down to experience and pretend it never happened.”

There was a visible, if not audible, sigh of relief in the waiting area, and Regina turned her attention back to Mum and Henry.

“That goes for you, too. I think I should be able to find you somewhere better to stay than the store until your new accommodation is ready.”

Henry was about to say that there was nowhere better than Mills, but wisely decided that it would not be a good idea to rock the boat when everything looked like it was going to turn out ok.

“In the meantime, would you perhaps like to join me for Christmas dinner?”

Henry and Mum just stared at each other, and then at Regina, and then back at each other.

“Are you serious?” Mum asked faintly.

“Well, it’s Christmas.” Regina gave a little shrug, and if Henry didn’t know better then he’d say that she was feeling just as nervous as they were. “And I happen to know an excellent shop where we can get all the ingredients for Christmas dinner at a terrific staff discount.”

“I… Surely you have your own family…” Mum was completely overwhelmed. Henry had never seen her like this before.

“Not really. You’re very welcome. As are you,” she added to Belle, Gold, Astrid, and Leroy, although they did seem a little like an afterthought.

“Thank you for the offer, but we’re all right,” Gold said.

“I don’t think that the turkey and potatoes are going to be much good having been in a cooling oven all day,” Belle pointed out, and any reply that Gold could have made was drowned out by a screech of alarm from Astrid.

“I LEFT THE OVEN ON!” she screamed, racing out of the police station without another thought for those left inside. Leroy made his apologies and rushed out after her, leaving Regina and Mum just staring after her whilst Henry tried his best not to laugh.

“Christmas dinner sounds great,” Mum said eventually.

X

It was the weirdest Christmas dinner that Emma had ever been to, but it was also by far the happiest. Regina didn’t pull any punches when it came to providing the best for her guests, and Emma didn’t think that she was going to need to eat for a week once she finished her helping of Christmas pudding.

They had all ended up in Regina’s townhouse in the end. Astrid’s turkey had burned to a cinder but she had thankfully not burned her flat down, and now she, Leroy and Henry were sitting in the living room watching Home Alone on the biggest widescreen TV that Emma had ever seen, the light from the Christmas tree illuminating them like a happy little family. Emma couldn’t help but smile. After everything that they had been through as just the two of them, it seemed so strange and so fortuitous that in their darkest hour, when they needed it most, they had found some more family, people whom they would never otherwise have ever come into contact with.

Gold had left the table halfway through the meal when his son had called him, and last Emma had seen, he was still talking, sitting on the stairs in the hall and smiling the biggest, happiest smile that Emma had ever seen on him. Once she’d got used to all his Christmas jumpers (today’s was Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer), and realised that he wasn’t half as standoffish as she’d always known him to be, she could see that he was really a softie on the inside, but worn down with hardship just as she and Henry had been. Emma was glad that he had Belle to bring some light into his life.

Speaking of Belle, she was in the kitchen brewing up her virgin mulled wine concoction with Mrs Lucas, Regina’s housekeeper who had been the source of the wonderful meal that they’d just eaten. Emma could hear the laughter from the dining room, and she allowed herself a giggle of her own. It was Belle who’d taken charge back in the yard once the police had arrived, and Emma was thankful that she had, fully believing that she might well have been spending the day behind bars if it hadn’t been for Belle’s intervention.

And then there was Regina, the only other person left in the dining room with Emma. They were eyeing each other up from opposite ends of the table, Emma could tell, even though they never quite managed to catch each other in the act. It had been all right when everyone else had been in here with them, but Emma had the distinct impression that Henry had shepherded Astrid and Leroy away purposefully in order to give his mother some time alone with her crush.

At least she got the feeling this time that it was mutual.

In the end, she decided to be bold. It was Christmas after all, and Regina had invited Emma and Henry for dinner, and more than likely to stay, since she’d promised them a better place than the store and as yet no mention had been made of where that was.

Emma got up and moved around the table to take the seat next to Regina that Mrs Lucas had occupied whilst they’d been eating.

“Thank you,” she began. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a Christmas like this one. I don’t know how Henry and I can even start to repay you for all that you’ve done for us today.”

Regina shrugged. “Just don’t make a habit of sleeping in my store, that’s all I ask. I’ll have to have words with the security guards about how they didn’t notice you for nearly a week. But then again, maybe not.” She smiled. “Maybe I ought to congratulate them instead. After all, it meant that I got to meet you properly. I’m sorry about my first impression.”

“I was never a huge believer in first impressions,” Emma said. “I didn’t exactly make a great one either, but I think we can move past that.”

Regina nodded. “Yes, I would like that.” She suddenly sprung up from her chair just as Emma was about to lean in a little closer. “I forgot something; when Gold and I went back to the store to pick up the things for dinner.”

She raced out of the dining room and returned a few moments later with the stocking that Emma had hung up for Henry the previous evening, the shabby parcels inside still intact.

“Gold found it outside your tent. I didn’t think that you would want Henry to go without his presents today, especially after all the, erm, excitement that you’ve had.”

Emma took the stocking, clutching it close to her chest. In all the ‘excitement’, she’d clean forgotten about it.

“It doesn’t look like much,” she said, looking around at her much more opulent surroundings.

“Nonsense. It’s from you, so Henry will love it. I may only have known you for a little while, but I can see just how deeply you two love each other.”

“We only have each other.” Emma paused. “Well, we only had each other, for a long time. Maybe now we’ve got a few more people as well.”

There was silence in the dining room, the sounds from the rest of the house fading into the background.

“I think I’d like to be one of those people, if you’ll have me,” Regina said softly.

Emma nodded. “Absolutely.”

She leaned in then, feeling Regina’s warm lips brush her cheek and the corner of her mouth. It was the beginning of something, something that Emma had not felt or wanted in a long time, but that she was definitely not averse to now.

As she got up to go and give Henry his Christmas presents, she felt the world’s biggest grin beginning to steal over her face.

Despite all the odds, at this grimmest point in her life, her faith in the kindness of strangers had been restored, and despite all the luxury that Mills had to offer, she knew that it was something that money couldn’t buy.

No matter what happened in the new year, Emma knew that with new friends and new love around her, it would most certainly be a happy one.


End file.
